Towards a Case-Based Reasoning Framework for Construction Project Planning and Control

The work presented in this paper is aimed at investigating the extent to which both ‘user and system decision-making ’ in construction project planning and control can be captured and stored for future use. This paper presents work being conducted to establish a framework for the application of CBR to construction planning and control. Due to the high variability in the type, size, and complexity of construction projects the work concentrates on the use of the technique for information re-use in project planning and control for highway bridge construction. Object models for a bridge and its components have been developed, and used to develop a prototype application, CBRidge. The application takes bridge information from databases and adds it to cases bases which can then be used for case matching. Once a suitable case has been found it can be adapted to more closely match the new project, and following this the adapted case can be linked to a planning model, enabling the plan for the matched case to be adapted for use with the current project. It concludes by discussing the benefits of the approach and the limitations of the system, together with future directions