Capitalising useful knowledge for construction procurement selection (CPS) decisions would provide a valuable asset to client organisations, as the successful/unsuccessful experience would help decision-makers avoid the occurrence of similar errors and ensure the most suitable procurement system is employed for a construction project. As a result, there is a need to examine the potential for developing a knowledge management model to capture and reuse experiential knowledge to guide CPS

more »

... s. This paper begins by identifying a suitable approach for managing CPS knowledge. This is followed by a discussion of the knowledge required for CPS decision support. A prototype knowledgemanagement model is developed, using the case-based reasoning (CBR) approach, and a mechanism for the retrieval and reuse of knowledge for guiding CPS decisions is elucidated. The results indicate that CBR is a suitable tool for formulating the procurement selection parameters and selecting a suitable procurement system for a construction project. This is primarily because the CBR approach is flexible enough to allow closely matching historic cases to be retrieved as well as enabling the decisionmaker to adapt the proposed solution based on the predominant characteristics of the client, project and external environment pertinent to the current project.