The effective selection of highway projects is essential for driving economic growth and facilitating trade in Saudi Arabia’s cities. However, current studies lack a comprehensive approach that assesses highways based on a full spectrum of economic, environmental, and social cost–benefit factors tailored to Saudi Arabia’s construction industry. This study addresses this gap by developing a framework that incorporates the aspects. The methodology comprises five steps: (1) a literature review to identify benefit and cost criteria; (2) expert surveys to select significant criteria; (3) the application of the stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA) method to determine criteria weights; (4) structured expert interviews to establish criteria quality weights; and (5) validation through application to three case studies, comparing the results with those obtained using the ANP method. The findings show that economically efficient road choices yield increased productivity and support industrial growth, while the most significant environmental benefit is reducing carbon emissions. Social benefits, as emphasized by experts, include accident reduction. Cost factors are also considered, with savings on vehicle operation costs identified as the most significant, as opined by the expert surveyed. Among the analyzed highways, Khurais Road, Riyadh, was the most efficient from the SWARA approach, with a value of 0.8, and the ANP case study conducted, with a normalized score of 0.045 and 0.230 for both benefits and cost criteria.

Evaluating risks is crucial for the smooth execution of pipeline projects. In Saudi Arabia, pipeline building projects frequently experience delays and cost overruns. This study tries to identify these risk factors. Thus, risk factors were collected from the literature and presented to four experts to identify the 26 most common factors for pipeline construction in Saudi Arabia. The risk factors were then assessed using a questionnaire to measure the degree of impact of the 26 factors by 135 participants. Partial least square structure equation model (PLS-SEM) and relative importance index (RII) methods were utilized to rank the significant factors after performing the reliability and discriminant validity of the questionnaire data. The findings show that the top five factors based on PLS-SEM were discrepancy between implementation requirements and specifications, financial failure/bankruptcy, poor pipeline material quality, supplying invalid materials, and weak ability to identify and monitor the threats. The ranking of the factors using PLS-SEM is different in the RII method. This difference is due to applying the Cronbachs α formula in the two methods. The PLS-SEM computes the coefficients of the groups, while the RII computes the coefficients for all factors. The study results can assist pipeline project managers in identifying and ranking risk variables to efficiently utilize the limited financial and human resources available for the risk management.