A Synthetic Method to Estimate WLC of High-Tech Railway Projects Based on CS, FC, GM and Delphi Methods

At feasible study stage, the accuracy of preliminary cost estimation is very important for cost control of whole project, especially for High-tech railway projects adopting the newest technologies, which have few S&P (similar and performed) projects in the world and so whose costs are hard to be estimated. For cost estimation of those projects, the present methods are to divide the whole project into items and then the cost of items are estimated through Linear Function methods, Quota method or Experts method under different conditions. But those methods not only have astounding workload but also result in big errors and bad reliabilities, which are one of the reasons that costs of performed railway projects are out of control. In this paper Fuzzy Clustering, Grey Model and Delphi method are used to estimate the costs of CSIs(Cost-Significant Items) of scheduled railway projects with High-tech based on the CS (Cost-significant) theory under the framework of WLC(Whole Life Costing). Besides, estimation of csf (cost significant factor) needs consistency theory based on experiences, and the total cost of new project can be calculated by sum of CSIs cost divided by csf.