Application of fuzzy logic to quality assessment of infrastructure projects at conceptual cost estimating stage

Abstract

This paper describes a model to assess the quality of infrastructure projects at the conceptual cost estimating stage based on the extent to which a project exhibits the ideal relationships between the quantities and costs of each of its components, compared to an ideal project that meets the requirements of an organization. The output of the model is a quality score that can be used to compare a project against others in an organization. The model is intended for use by organizations in the project planning phase to help identify potential scope and (or) design deficiencies. A fuzzy expert system is used to model the relationships between the physical characteristics of a project and the expected quality using a cost ratio comparison between an ideal project (i.e., a cost model) and the project being compared. The fuzzy expert system provides the advantage of allowing assessments to be made in linguistic terms, which suits the way in which experts express themselves and captures heuristic knowledge of the experts in assessing the quality of a project at the conceptual cost estimating stage.