Expert Systems in Construction Management: Is the Hype Over?

Abstract

Because of its characteristic attributes of experience based problem-solving and qualitative data processing, construction management has been a target for expert system development since the late seventies. The eighties saw a hype of development of expert systems. The trend continued until recent few years when development problems accumulated and new techniques emerged to assist decision making. This paper presents a review of expert system applications development in the construction management area and in which four major types are identified comprising selection systems, advisory systems, monitoring and control systems, and analysis and evaluation systems. The reasons why expert systems seem to be out of favour are examined and typical problems experienced by earlier systems are analysed. As a result, four major types problem areas are identified comprising knowledge elicitation, knowledge representation, limitation of development tools, and ES development processes.

Finally, the trend of development of knowledge based applications for construction management tasks is identified, possible areas of improvement are explored, and future concentration areas are suggested for new expert system applications in the construction management domain.