A case-based reasoning approach for estimating the costs of pump station projects

The effective estimation of costs is crucial to the success of construction projects. Cost estimates are used to evaluate, approve and/or fund projects. Organizations use some form of classification system to identify the various types of estimates that may be prepared during the lifecycle of a project. This research presents a parametric-cost model for pump station projects. Fourteen factors have been identified as important to the influence of the cost of pump station projects. A data set that consists of forty-four pump station projects (fifteen water and twenty-nine waste water) are collected to build a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) library and to test its performance. The results obtained from the CBR tool are processed and adopted to improve the accuracy of the results. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the development of the effectiveness of the tool.