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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1      Background of the Study

Construction industry is highly competitive industry. To win a construction projects, many construction companies have to work with small profit margin. Many construction companies fail to get profit from their projects because of their lack of capability in developing strategy that based on effective management system (O’Brien and Zilly, 1991). This condition typically caused by limited capabilities of project personnel, which resulted in ineffective project control. For that reason, the focus of project control in most developing countries is in project cost rather than time and 1969 quality (Kazi and Chotchai, 1999). 

Expert systems are used to overcome problems in fields from assessment to engineering consulting (RuizMezcua et al. 2011) by employing human expertise in different domains (Qian et al. 2005). Expert systems can be used in any field (Ooshaksaraie et al. 2012). Therefore, using expert systems to solve sophisticated engineering problems that require a significant amount of experience is very common, and researchers have developed many systems for use in different fields (Park et al. 2010).

In developing countries such as Indonesia, construction project failures are caused by (Dipohusodo, 1996):

x Poor monitoring and control

x Lack of documentation on project lessons learned

x Not adaptive to information technology development

x Delayed and mistakes in decision making

There are also constraints that are faced by construction companies which are caused by internal as well as external factors. These factors are considered as sources of risk that potentially resulted in cost overrun (Naoum, 1999). Cost overrun in construction projects in Indonesia like in many developing nations is typically caused by poor weather condition forecast, increased material cost due to inflation, increased labour cost, and lack or project experience (Kaming et al., 1997). A good coordination among project stakeholders using a good control system tool is needed in order to achieve required project performances (Ritz, 1994).

There are several variables that need to be controlled in order to control project cost, which include: labours, materials, equipment, subcontract and field overhead (Zhan, 1998; Asiyanto, 2003). Sufficient data, particularly in material costs, is required to have effective monitoring and evaluation process. To support this, a good control system tools is needed.

Improvement in construction process is required in order to have a better quality performance management. This improvement should consider factors that directly influence the quality of construction process, particularly those that are related to documenting lessons learned, management techniques and technology used (Arditi and Gunaydin, 1998).

In view of the foregoing, this study was aimed at exploring the application of an expert system approach to overcoming excessive cost on building sites.