Developing taxonomy for the domain ontology of construction contractual semantics: A case study on the AIA A201 document

In construction contractual management, sharing experts' domain knowledge through ontology is a good way to narrow the knowledge gap between the domain experts and the construction team. However, little work has been done on ontology taxonomy development in this domain. Based on a literature review on sharing domain knowledge, taxonomy development methods and the essence of construction contracts, this study proposes a synthesized methodology for taxonomy development in the domain of construction contractual semantics. This methodology is based on an ontological model extracted from definitions found in the contract, and uses common root concepts as the initial root concept classes, and includes the iterative development and competency questions approaches as well. In the case study, using the research results from pilot studies, the proposed methodology was applied to the AIA A201 General Conditions of the Contract for Construction (2007) document at the textual level. As a result, a taxonomy was developed which was used to determine the validity of the proposed methodology. The taxonomy development methodology and the developed taxonomy itself are both valuable contributions in the quest to further develop ontology-based applications for sharing domain knowledge about construction contract semantics.