An integrated approach for case-based design and estimating

The construction industry is fragmented by nature. The design process is separated from the construction process and the essential involvement of numerous design, estimating and construction professionals exacerbates fragmentation. In the past, researchers have used IT for providing numerous decision support systems for the professionals involved in the industry. These have created islands of automation and are far from achieving an acceptable level of integration across disciplines and across the design and construction processes. In order to achieve these high level objectives the design process and the parallel cost planning process was examined to identify aspects that need to be addressed for integration. It was revealed that the use of previous successful design forms a viable alternative to generation of designs from first principles. The technique of using previous designs for creating new designs is known as case based design which organises previous design solutions as design cases in a library.