Development of a software package for pre-design forecasting construction cost and duration of buildings
- Bangkok : Asian Institute of Technology, 2001
- 104 leaves
- Thesis ; no. ST-01-35 .
- Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. ST-01-35 .
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Civil Engineering
Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2001
The development of software package for forecasting cost and duration of building is undertaken in this study. Two Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to forecast cost and duration of buildings at the pre-design stage were developed by Bhokha (1998). Even though both networks show advantage over conventional methods of forecasting cost and duration of buildings (having acceptable error by requiring only basic information at the pre-design stage), they lack user-friendliness. This is a significant problem preventing the use of the networks. Visual Basic 6.0 is therefore selected to create Graphical User Interface (GUI) to enhance the use of the program. The program is designed to operate under Microsoft Windows environment. The outputs are displayed in the comprehensive format of graphic presentation. A database system is provided to record the historical and calculated building sample for retraining both networks in the future. Additionally, help facility is also incorporated into the program to give basic explanations about the basis of ANN, steps of using the program and criteria to input data in form of help file. A number of building samples are used to test software package by comparing results to legacy code. The retrieved outputs confirm that the developed software package produces the same results as the legacy code.
Construction industry--Costs Construction industry--Automation