Agents for Supporting Utility Tradeoff of Negotiation between Construction Contractor and Suppliers

Abstract

This research describes a decision-support model that helps business bargainers explore negotiable options for the procurement in the construction industry. The proposed model is consisted of three software agents. One agent supports the contractors' decision by allowing them to input their negotiation preferences, and another supports the suppliers. Either of agents is not aware of the preferences of the other. The third agent plays the role of middle man who receives the proposals from both sides and search for optimal negotiation result in terms of total utility. Compared to the actual agreement specified in the two surveyed project contracts, the negotiation results suggested by the model increased the total utility by as high as 10% based on the preferences of human bargainers.