The Application of Artificial Neural Networks in Indirect Cost Estimation

Estimating of the costs of construction project is one of the most important task in the management of the project. The total costs can be divided into direct costs that are related to executing the works, and indirect costs that accompany delivery. A precise costs estimation is usually a highly labour and time-intensive task especially when using manual calculation methods. This paper presents Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach to predicting index of indirect cost of construction projects in Poland. A quantitative study was undertaken on the factors conditioning indirect costs of polish construction projects and a determination was made of the actual costs incurred by enterprises during project implementation. As a result of these studies, a data set was assembled covering 72 real-life cases of building projects constructed in Poland.