Predicting Industrial Construction Labor Productivity Using Fuzzy Expert Systems
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 131, Issue 8
Abstract
The objective of this technical note is to illustrate the application of fuzzy expert systems to the modeling of a practical problem—that of predicting the labor productivity of two common industrial construction activities: rigging pipe and welding pipe. This note illustrates how to develop and test such a model, given the realistic constraints of subjective assessments, multiple contributing factors, and limitations on data sets. The factors that affect the productivity of each activity are identified, and fuzzy membership functions and expert rules are developed. The models are validated using data collected from an actual construction project. The resulting models are found to have high linguistic prediction accuracies. This note is of relevance to researchers by demonstrating how a fuzzy expert system can be developed and tested. It is of relevance to industry practitioners by illustrating how fuzzy logic and expert systems modeling can be exploited to help them solve real world problems.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 131 • Issue 8 • August 2005
Pages: 938 - 941
Copyright
© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 18, 2003
Accepted: Jan 12, 2005
Published online: Aug 1, 2005
Published in print: Aug 2005
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