Analogy based estimation in building services

The introduction of Private Finance Initiative in the United Kingdom has prompted the need for quality whole life cost information. This in turn has led to a search for new innovative methods for producing whole life cost information. The research reported in this paper is a part of an overall approach being developed for whole life costing of building services. A particular problem identified in producing initial estimates of the whole life cost of building services is that the information on the building services design is limited. Analogy Based Estimation (ABE) was investigated as a potential approach to generate more information for estimation purposes and to estimate the capital cost of building services. The performance of ABE was investigated in three test settings. The estimation performance of ABE was compared with the estimation performance of linear regression (LR). ABE outperformed LR on two test settings. However, the estimation performance of ABE was found not to be sufficient for the approach to be applied in industry prior to further investigation. The tests were hindered by lack of data and inconsistencies in the data obtained. Therefore, no conclusions can be made on the applicability of ABE in this particular problem domain and ABE remains a potential approach. The research described in this paper will stand as a starting point for further testing and development of ABE in the estimation of building services.

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