The AHP method allows you to generate a single measure of desirability for project alternatives with respect to multiple attributes (qualitative and quantitative). By contrast, life-cycle cost (Practice E 917), net savings (Practice E 1074), savings-to-investment ratio (Practice E 964), internal rate-of-return (Practice E 1057), and payback (Practice E 1121) methods all require you to put a monetary value on benefits and costs in order to include them in a measure of project worth.

Use AHP to evaluate a finite and generally small set of discrete and predetermined options or alternatives. Specific AHP applications are ranking and choosing among alternatives. For example, rank alternative building locations with AHP to see how they measure up to one another, or use AHP to choose among building materials to see which is best for your application.

Use AHP if no single alternative exhibits the most preferred available value or performance for all attributes. This is often the result of an underlying trade-off relationship among attributes. An example is the trade-off between low desired energy costs and large glass window areas (which may raise heating and cooling costs while lowering lighting costs).

Use AHP to evaluate alternatives whose attributes are not all measurable in the same units. Also use AHP when performance relative to some or all of the attributes is impractical, impossible, or too costly to measure. For example, while life-cycle costs are directly measured in monetary units, the number and size of offices are measured in other units, and the public image of a building may not be practically measurable in any unit. To help you choose among candidate buildings with these diverse attributes, use AHP to evaluate your alternatives.

Potential users of AHP include architects, developers, owners, or lessors of buildings, real estate professionals (commercial and residential), facility managers, building material manufacturers, and agencies managing building portfolios.

1.1 This practice presents a procedure for calculating and interpreting AHP scores of a project's total overall desirability when making building-related capital investment decisions.

1.2 In addition to monetary benefits and costs, the procedure allows for the consideration of characteristics or attributes which decision makers regard as important, but which are not readily expressed in monetary terms. Examples of such attributes that pertain to the selection of a building alternative (and its surroundings) are location/accessibility, site security, maintainability, quality of the sound and visual environment, and image to the public and occupants.