Abstract: There has been widespread expansion and requisite development in construction industry of Saudi Arabia due to changes in the Kingdom’s socio-economic development policies. The selection of construction contractors is an essential component in the success of projects, however both lack of skilled manpower and lack of experience have been observed in terms of managing major projects within Saudi Arabia. Thus, there is dire need to design an appropriate framework to select, evaluate, measure and monitor the performance of construction contractors. This paper critically analyses and evaluates current techniques for pre-selecting contractors and identifies the most appropriate techniques and criteria that could be adopted in Saudi Arabia. This has been achieved by undertaking a critical analysis of the literature and by carrying out preliminary interviews with practitioners, which formed basis of questionnaires and interviews with Saudi professional working in field.

Keywords: Construction Industry, contractor performance, framework, evaluation.