Affiliations: School of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author. Ahmad Makui, School of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +989121439946; Fax: +982173021214; E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: Recent advances in technology and fundamental changes in most scientific areas have affected projects and made their nature and environmental circumstances much more complex than in the past. In such conditions, the customary principles and practices of project management are not anymore able to handle the emerging complexities of projects. Fortunately, in recent years, researchers and practitioners have recognized the importance of complexity and tried to identify the various aspects of project complexity and provide appropriate solutions to deal with them. One of the main steps to manage system complexity is to evaluate and measure it. Because of the ambiguity and uncertainty of complexity context and the difficulty of its exact quantification based on available information, the application of fuzziness could be very appropriate. Hence, in this paper we tried to design and implement an inference system in fuzzy environment to evaluate project complexity. Also, because of the importance of construction projects, we particularly study this kind of projects. Finally, it should be noted that system complexity can exist in two forms: static and dynamic. Therefore, considering the breadth of issues related to each of these two complexity areas, just the static complexity of construction projects has been studied here.
Keywords: Project management, construction industry, static complexity, evaluation, fuzzy set theory, inference system
