Early Stage Cost Estimation of Buildings Construction Projects using Artificial Neural Networks

A Neural Network Model for Building Construction Projects Cost Estimating

“…The model had one hidden layer with seven neurons. The results obtained from the trained models indicated that neural networks are reasonably succeeded in predicting the early stage cost estimation of buildings 11 KICEM Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management using basic information of the projects and without the need for a more detailed design [13].…”

“…Despite the large number of researchers who applied neural network approach in various fields of engineering, the studies and researches on utilizing neural networks to estimate the cost of construction projects at various stages of the work are very limited [13].…”

“…Training and cross validation sets are used in learning the model through utilizing training set in modifying the network weights to minimize the network error, and monitoring this error by cross validation set during the training process. However, test set does not enter in the training process and it hasn"t any effect on the training process, where it is used for measuring the generalization ability of the network, and evaluated network performance [13].…”

“…Floor area parameter, Number of stories, Slab type, Foundation type, Number of elevators, Type of project, Type of project and External finishing parameter were adopted by several researchers [5]; [12]; [13]; [2]; [4]; [14]; [15].…”

“…However, the authors reckon that the researches and studies on utilizing neural networks to estimate the cost of construction projects at various stages of the work are very limited [12] , [13].…”