Analysis of cost deviations in Reify's construction projects using Artificial Intelligence

Afonso Correia Valério Neves

Key information

Authors:

Afonso Correia Valério Neves (Afonso Correia Valério Neves)

Supervisors:

Nuno Gonçalo Cordeiro Marques de Almeida (Nuno Gonçalo Cordeiro Marques de Almeida); Bruno Amorim Pacheco

Published in

December 3, 2021

Abstract

To accomplish a project of significant dimension, there are numerous risks to consider to reduce unwanted costs and predict with high precision the final costs. Subsequently, there is a consider-able need to understand how decision making can be used to improve the process of prevision. The project owner and the project management team make the macro project characteristics, and these decisions can have a high impact during the construction process. So, the success of the project is highly dependent on all decisions. Therefore, to choose the right path for each project, there is a need to understand all the variables and factors that will influence the costs. During the last few years, several studies have been conducted to understand all the factors causing cost deviations and how they can be predicted. Still, due to the countless differences between all projects, there are no correct variables to use. The problem of not knowing the right variables makes it difficult for project owners to implement a unique method for decision making. This study aims to enrich this topic by using artificial intelligence as a tool to study a few different big dimension projects of Reify, from the project owner perspective and understand how specific project characteristics and factors can influence future costs. The use of artificial intelligence brings to this field a new perspective because it allows more precise results and to work with bigger datasets. With the dataset available it was possible to apply re-gression and cluster analysis.