## 4 Results and Findings  
The ranking results are presented in Table 3. Of all the factors, only time for bid preparation (SF18) and current workloads of the expected significant competitors (SF30) had a mean value less than or equal to four, which means that SF30 and SF4 were not significant factors. As a result, 31 factors were rated as essential factors for contractors' BNB decisions. The terms of payment (SF17), reputation of the client regarding his commitment to making timely payments (SF15), original price estimated by the client (SF8), profit track record for similar projects (SF9), and contract type (SF4) were the top five factors and are related to project profitability.  
Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3 show the cluster results for project-related, firm-related, and market-related factors, respectively. The intuition based on these figures is that each dimension has two clusters, which are the lowest clusters of the HCA. In total, six clusters were determined. Each cluster shown in Table 4 was given a name to reflect the attributes of the clustered factors. The names of the six clusters are expected profitability, project requirements, organizational goals, organizational resources, expected competition, and the local business environment. By using the importance index, the rank of each cluster was generated, as shown in Table 4. Expected profitability and organizational goals comprise the top clusters, and expected competition ranks at the bottom.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline Rank & Code & Mean \\ \hline
1 & SF17 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 6.29 \\
2 & SF15 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 6.23 \\
3 & SF8 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.90 \\
4 & SF9 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.85 \\
5 & SF4 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.75 \\
6 & SF22 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 5.66 \\
7 & SF13 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.58 \\
8 & SF26 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 5.48 \\
9 & SF25 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 5.34 \\
10 & SF12 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.29 \\
11 & SF7 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.19 \\
12 & SF20 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 5.19 \\
13 & SF27 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 5.16 \\
14 & SF5 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.14 \\
15 & SF6 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.14 \\
16 & SF19 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 5.12 \\
17 & SF10 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 5.11 \\
18 & SF3 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 4.99 \\
19 & SF33 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.88 \\
20 & SF16 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 4.84 \\
21 & SF23 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.84 \\
22 & SF32 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.82 \\
23 & SF14 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 4.78 \\
24 & SF29 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.67 \\
25 & SF24 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.62 \\
26 & SF33 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.60 \\
27 & SF31 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.49 \\
28 & SF11 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 4.38 \\
29 & SF21 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.36 \\
30 & SF2 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 4.29 \\
31 & SF1 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 4.08 \\
32 & SF30 \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) & 4.00 \\
33 & SF18 \({}^{\Delta}\) & 3.82 \\ \hline \end{tabular} Note: \({}^{\Delta}\) Project-related factors; \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) Firm-related factors; \({}^{\blacklozenge}\) Market-related factors.  
\end{table}
Table 3: Rank of factors affecting contractors’ BNB decisions.  
Figure 1: The cluster results of important project-related factors.  
Figure 3: The cluster results of important market-related factors.  
Figure 2: The cluster results of important firm-related factors.