| dc.description.abstract | Engineering consultation is a knowledge intensive industry. It operates by providing design-related technical services. The costs of design are much less than the construction costs in traditional projects. However, the decisions made in the design phase have a significant impact on the final products of the project, especially for mega public construction projects such as Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRT).
The goal of this research focuses on establishing a performance evaluation mechanism for the consulting firms that execute detailed design and provide technical services for the Taipei Rapid Transit System (TRTS). This study first established 24 indicators to evaluate these firms’ performance by reviewing technical papers, regulations, ordinances, contracts, and research reports; and also by interviewing experts. These 24 indicators were incorporated into the four aspects of balanced scorecard including customer, finance, internal processes, innovation and learning to establish the architecture of the evaluation mechanism. The weight of each indicator was calculated by analytic hierarchy process (AHP) from a survey conducted among experts. The results showed that the top-three indicators were quantity take-off, function conformity, and budgeting; whose weights were 16.9%, 13.0%, and 11.8%; respectively. This research also built up evaluation criteria for each of the 24 indicators. The evaluation procedure was also clearly defined to complete the performance evaluation mechanism. Three TRTS cases were tested by the evaluation method afterwards. Correspondence was found between the evaluation results and the performance of the sampled consulting firms. This shows the accuracy of the evaluation method and presents, objectively and explicitly, the performance of the consulting firms.
The mechanism of performance evaluation that established by this study can be applied to measure service performance effectively during the design stage. It not only facilitates the monitoring of consulting firms, but also improves the quality of design and performance of their services. Moreover, the system can help to reduce unnecessary change orders and disputes during the construction stage. Furthermore, it helps to construct MRT in meeting standards of high quality, with accurate progress, and under reasonable costs. | en_US |