When designing a steel-framed building, there are many design options available in terms of meeting the structural fire resistance objectives. Different stakeholders have different opinions about which approach is the most appropriate. A tool or procedure is needed that allows the integration of these diverse stakeholder desires to achieve the most appropriate option. Hence, this research aims to develop this tool.

Firstly, extraction and understanding of stakeholder views, along with the capacity to rank them, are needed. However, the challenge is that there are many stakeholder views, so there is also the need to manage these views without ignoring any of them. Towards that some tools are identified in this work to manage different and sometimes divergent stakeholder views to rank them for appropriate decision making. Secondly, to achieve consensus on multiple stakeholder views, the Weighted/Geometric Mean Method (W/GMM) is investigated. Decision analysis techniques including Analytic Hierarchy/Network Processes (AHP/ANP) and Technique of Order of Preference and Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are also studied to understand the influences of stakeholder views on competing design options and to rank the options in the decision-making process.

Thirdly, to critically assess the ranking of the design options, a parametric study is needed to predict the suitability and cost-benefit of the various available options. This is carried out by probabilistic analysis of typical structural steel members considering varying parameters and limit state criteria. A probabilistic cost evaluation is also included. Hence, a hybrid design decision analysis tool is developed for the integration of the assessment outcomes to enable the identification of the most cost-effective design option.

The final part of this work takes a case study of a realistic building and demonstrates how the process can be applied to structural fire design. This is carried out by integrating and synthesising views from chartered stakeholders and outcomes of the parametric study on representative steel members of the building using the developed hybrid decision analysis tool. The case study follows a risk-based structural fire design decision-making procedure.