DEVELOPING AN EXPERT SYSTEM FOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS DELIVERY IN EGYPT

Abstract

A pnmary consideration for all parties in the construction industry should be the completion of projects as efficiently and cost effectively as possible. Unfortunately, many projects fail to meet their cost, time, and quality objectives. The cause of many of these failures is rooted in the method used for delivering the project.

Project Delivery System (PDS) is an organizational concept which assigns specific responsibilities and authorities to people and organizations. PDS selection is affected by different factors including: project characteristics (size, complexity•, certainty, and objective), and O'.Vner characteristics (type, design capabilities, and management capabilities). Main components of PDS include Scope, Organization, Contract, and Award.

The purpose of this study is to build an AI computer program to help the decision makers in the Egyptian construction industry in selecting the most appropriate system for delivering their projects.

The selection of a suitable PDS for a given construction project requires experience and expertise that cover all about different systems for delivering projects, their advantages, limitations, and different factors affecting the selection process. Furthermore. PDS selection is a task of heuristic nature, and most of the data about PDS evaluation and selection are significantly qualitative. On the other hand, Neural Nets is not convenient to the symbolic nature of the problem and experts availability excludes the validity of DSS application for the problem. Therefore, developing an expert system could help a potential project owner in determining the most appropriate system for delivering their projects. LEVELS OBJECT shell is selected for building the required system. This can be attributed to: easy user interface, appropriate rules size, works in windows environment, and easy building and development