A Knowledge-based System as a Decision Making Tool for Effective Management of Variations and Design Improvement: Leveraging on Information Technology Applications

In a perfect world, changes will be confined to the planning stages. However, late changes often occur during construction, and frequently cause serious disruption to the project. The integration of project knowledge and experience at the design phase provides the best opportunity to improve overall project performance. This paper presents a knowledge-based system (KBS) for management of variations in educational building projects in Singapore. The KBS consists of two main components, i.e., a knowledge-base and a controls selection shell. The KBS is developed by collecting data from the source documents of the 80 educational projects, questionnaire survey, literature review and in-depth interviews with the professionals. The system provides detailed information about variations in the educational building projects completed. This may assist the professionals in identifying the potential variations and their effective controls during the early stages of the construction projects. Furthermore, the KBS provides designers with information on what changes in design can cause to variations. The system is expected to assist in improving project designs because the most likely areas on which to focus to reduce variations can be identified during the design stage of the building projects. In short, the KBS is able to assist professionals by providing accurate and timely information for decision making, and a user-friendly tool for analyzing and selecting the suggested controls for variations in educational buildings. With further generic modification, the KBS will also be useful for the management of variations in other types of building projects, thus helping to raise the overall level of productivity in the construction industry.