“…In the competitive environment of the construction industry, costs play a key role as a crucial aspect of project management (Noorzai and Golabchi, 2020;Noorzai et al, 2022a). To date, researchers have used a variety of methods and tools, such as neural networks (Karaca et al, 2020;Alex et al, 2010;Petroutsatou et al, 2012;Asghari et al, 2021;Marzouk and Elkadi, 2016), machine learning algorithms (Rafiei and Adeli, 2018;Lowe et al, 2006;Pham et al, 2021), case-based reasoning (CBR) (Ahn et al, 2020;Kim and Kim, 2010;Kwon et al, 2019Kwon et al, , 2020, and time-series models (Moon et al, 2018;Elfahham, 2019), to improve cost overrun estimates and identify influential factors. Conceptual cost estimation precedes capital commitments and must show the desired level of certainty (Baccarini and Love, 2014).…”