The implementation of hybrid soft computing model in estimating project completion

Abstract

In construction project management, there are several factors influencing the final project cost. Among various approaches, estimate at completion (EAC) is an essential approach utilized for final project estimation. The main merit of EAC is including the probability of the project performance and risk. In addition, EAC is extremely helpful for project managers to define and determine the critical problems throughout the project progress and determine the appropriate solutions to these problems. In this research, a relatively new intelligent model called deep neural network (DNN) is proposed to calculate the EAC. The proposed DNN model is authenticated against one of the predominated intelligent models conducted on the EAC prediction, namely support vector regression model (SVR). In order to demonstrate the capability of the model in the engineering applications, historical project information obtained from fifteen projects in Iraq region is inspected in this research. The second phase of this research is about the integration of two input optimization algorithms hybridized with the proposed and the comparable predictive intelligent models. These input optimization algorithms are genetic

algorithm (GA) and brute force algorithm (BF). The aim of integrating these input optimization algorithms to approximate the input attributes and investigate the highly influenced factors on the calculation of EAC. Overall, the enthusiasm of this study is to provide a robust intelligent model that estimates the project cost accurately over the traditional methods. Also, the second aim is to introduce a reliable methodology that can provide efficient and effective project cost control. The proposed GA-DNN is demonstrated as a reliable and robust intelligence model for EAC calculation.