Performance evaluation for engineering consultants of MRT projects in design phase

Engineering consultants play an important role in construction projects since their design results significantly affect the projects. However, in the design phase, their service quality is difficult to evaluate and only little research has been done on such evaluation. This study attempts to establish a performance evaluation mechanism for consulting firms that execute detailed designs for mass rapid transit projects in Taiwan. This study first reviewed domestic and overseas articles related to performance evaluation and then, after conducting expert interviews established 24 performance evaluation indicators for evaluating performance of the consulting firms in the design phase. These indicators were further categorized into an evaluation hierarchy with four aspects based on the concepts of Balanced Scorecard. The weight of each indicator in the hierarchy was then calculated by Analytic Hierarchy Process. Lastly, evaluation and scoring standards for all indicators were clearly described in order to achieve an overall numerical score representing the performance of the consulting firm after the evaluation. This performance evaluation mechanism was tested in three real cases, and evaluation results closely matched the actual technical consultation performance results, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the evaluation mechanism established in this research.