Decision support system for reliability assessment of management systems of organisations in the construction industry.

Reliability assessment of the management systems of organisations in the construction industry and the study of the possible causes of their failure as well as proposal of remedies for overcoming them are the main objectives of this thesis. This is achieved through the development of a user friendly and interactive Decision Support System (DSS) built on a PC. It is named "ManageRely" (Management Reliability). This innovative DSS uses Knowledge-Based Production Rules [KBPR] together with important qualitative and quantitative reliability techniques of the Reliability Block Diagram [RBD], the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis [FMEA], the Function-Component-Parameter analysis [FCP] and the Fault Tree Analysis [FTA]. The Fault Tree Diagram [FTD] is drawn to identify all weak parts and defects in the system. Monte Carlo Simulation [MCS], as risk analysis and response method, is used to simulate the FTD in order to mimic the behaviour of the system realistically and to help in management of the uncertainties in the system. It also helps in producing the full probability distributions of the systems' failure events. This offers the managers a realistic stochastic representation of the failure problem instead of an unreliable single value obtained from deterministic approaches.

ManageRely's main promise lies in its ability to help managers to predict the reliability of the whole organisation as well as its subsystems and thus help set-up more reliable organisational management systems.