Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management

Forecasting final budget and duration of highway construction projects

Wichan Pewdum Thammasak Rujirayanyong Vanee Sooksatra
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Wichan Pewdum Thammasak Rujirayanyong Vanee Sooksatra, (2009),"Forecasting final budget and
duration of highway construction projects", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol.
16 Iss 6 pp. 544 - 557
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ECAM
16,6
544
Received February 2009
Revised July 2009
Accepted August 2009
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Engineering, Construction and
Architectural Management
Vol. 16 No. 6, 2009
pp. 544-557
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0969-9988
DOI 10.1108/09699980911002566
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0969-9988.htm
Forecasting final budget and
duration of highway construction
projects
Wichan Pewdum, Thammasak Rujirayanyong and Vanee Sooksatra
Rangsit University, Pathumthani, Thailand
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop models to forecast final budget and duration of a
highway construction project during construction stage.
Design/methodology/approach – Highway construction project data are collected and analyzed to
find out factors affecting project final budget and duration before developing the forecasting models,
research for which is based on the principle of Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The forecasting
results obtained from the proposed method are compared with those obtained from the current method
based on earned value.
Findings – Factors affecting final budget and duration are presented. The forecasting results
obtained from the proposed method based on ANN application are more accurate and stable than those
obtained from the current method based on earned value.
Research limitations/implications – Factors affecting final budget and duration may differ if
applied in other countries, since the project data were collected in the Kingdom of Thailand.
The forecasting models, therefore, must be reconsidered for better outcomes.
Practical implications – The study presents a useful tool for the highway construction project
manager to predict project final budget and duration. The results can potentially provide early
warning of over-budget and schedule delay.
Originality/value – The ANN models to forecast final budget and duration of highway construction
projects during the construction stage, developed by using project data reflecting continual and
seasonal cycle data, can provide better predicting results.
Keywords Neural nets, Construction industry, Forecasting, Roads, Thailand
Paper type Case study
Introduction
The universal objective of a construction project is to complete the project on time and
within budget while meeting established quality requirements and other specifications.
To achieve that objective, substantial effort on managing the construction process
must be provided and could not be done without a plan and cost control system.
A control system periodically collects actual cost and schedule data and then contrasts
with the planned schedule to measure work progress if ahead or behind schedule and
underline potential problems (Teicholz, 1993). Cost and time are the two key
parameters that play significant roles in construction project management and
researches related to the parameters have been constantly proposed to provide
appropriate methods and tools for the construction manager in order to handle a
project to meet its objective both pre-construction and during the construction stage.
During the construction stage, a common question asked by all parties involved in a
 project, especially an owner, how much will the final budget of the project be? or when Forecasting final
will the project be completed? budget
Predicting project performance is very essential in tracking and controlling a
construction project. Several methods have been proposed such as that based on
earned value technique, fuzzy logic, social judgment theory and neural network.
Considered as a deterministic method, earned value technique assumes in general that
either the performance efficiency achieved up to the reporting date remains unchanged 545
throughout the rest of the project, or that the performance will be as planned beyond
the reporting date (Christensen, 1992; Fleming and Koppelman, 2000; Alshaibani, 1999;
Zwikael et al., 2000). However, the concept of the earned value method basically focuses
on variances of cost and schedule in order to identify potential schedule slippage and
area of cost overruns. Al-Jibouri (1985) utilized the mean of the actual cost of the work
performed for each cost account, referred to also as the cost of unit earning, and its
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standard deviation to predict project cost at completion. The methods assume that the
monthly progress of each cost account is a stationary process with a mean and
standard deviation. The reliability of the forecasting model, however, is affected by the
variability of the cost of unit of earning at each reporting period. Eldin and Hughes
(1992) and Alshaibani (1999) utilized cost components that make use of a cost
breakdown structure to improve forecasting accuracy. Diekmann and Al-Tabtabai
(1992) proposed a method based on the social judgment theory to provide an approach
to predict the future based on a set of cues, originating from human judgment rather
than from purely mathematical algorithms. Experienced project managers are required
in getting satisfactory results if methods based on the social judgment theory were
used. Moselhi et al. (2006) applied “Fuzzy logic” to forecast potential cost overruns and
schedule delays on the construction project. The results of the methods are useful to
assess the project status at certain times and to evaluate the benchmarks depicting
profit efficiency of the project. This helps the project staff to complete the project by the
time limit and to monitor the project budget. Kaastra and Boyd (1996) developed
“Artificial Neural Network: ANN” as an efficient forecasting tool that can work on past
“Pattern Recognition” and display the connection of various affecting factors. The
future tendency can then be forecast. Lowe et al. (2006) developed the regression cost
models to estimate the construction cost of buildings at the early stage of projects.
A total of 41 potential independent variables were identified but only four variables:
gross internal floor area function, duration, mechanical installations, and piling, are the
key linear cost drivers in the data, since they appeared in all models. The models
present further insight into the relationships between construction cost and the various
predictor variables. The estimating results obtained from the models provide quality of
early stage cost advice (Williams (2003)) predicting the final cost for competitively bid
construction projects using regression models.
Artificial Neural Network has been widely used as a tool in construction on different
functions such as estimating, planning and productivity forecasting. The potential use
of neural networks in construction was pointed out by Moselhi et al. (1991). Hegazy and
Ayed (1998) developed a model to estimate the road construction cost in Canada by
considering project physical features:
.
Type of project.
.
Project scope.
 ECAM .
Construction year.
16,6 .
Seasons.
.
Construction site.
.
Project length of time.
.
Project distance.
546 .
Number of lanes.
.
Number of streams cutting across the roads.
.
Condition of soil at construction sites.

Average error value gained from the tests of 18 projects was 1.04. Bhanupong (2004)
developed a model to forecast accumulative cost of road construction projects,
considering two major groups of factors including factors concerning project features
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and factors concerning data correction factors. It was found that the obtained
accumulative cost data can be applied in managing a financial plan for accurate and
rapid bidding. Wilmot and Mei (2005) applied Artificial Neural Network to estimate
future road construction cost and developed a model using MATLAB application to
estimate future construction cost. The cost was calculated from commercial index
variables correlated with construction labor, machines, and road construction material
costs. Past project costs, in accordance with future policy tendency, must be calculated.
The result of this model can be applied for construction cost estimation, with the
accuracy rate of 95 percent.
Most past researches mentioned above focused mainly on the contractor perspective
to predict project status in order to give early warning of cost overruns and schedule
delays, while, in the area of highway construction, the researches emphasized on
estimating project cost for budgeting propose, since most of a highway construction
project is funded by the government. Even though, before the project was awarded and
the contract was being signed, it is the common interest by the government to make
sure that the given budget would be sufficient to sponsor the projects, there is a
possibility that the given budget would not be adequate because quantities of work are
not exactly known until the project is complete. For example, sub-base material and
earthwork quantities depend on the soil conditions which may vary from location to
location. Therefore a unit price contract is widely used in highway construction.
Additional funding is needed to complete the project, if over-budget occurs. The
government representative to the project must constantly measure the project budget
status, forecast the final budget and time needed to complete the project, and submit a
project status report to higher management on a regular basis. Consequently, a method
of forecasting final budget and time required to finish the highway construction project
during construction stage is presented as the objective of this paper.

Current method used in Thailand

In the Kingdom of Thailand, there are approximately 60,000 kilometers of the
transportation networks that are the responsibility of the Department of Highways.
The department has developed the networks for the people of Thailand with a budget
of more than 45,000 million baht in 2007, roughly average of 3 percent of the national
annual budget in the past years. The total budget is grouped into three categories,
 namely construction, maintenance and management. About 85 percent of the budgets Forecasting final
are allocated to the construction and maintenance category. Like construction projects budget
in general, the main objective of a road construction project is to successfully and
qualitatively complete the construction at the time required within the given budget.
To achieve such an objective, it essentially needs a good plan and control system. Since
it is uncertain by the nature of the highway construction project, the actual quantity
and cost will not be known until at the end of the project as mentioned earlier. The 547
department representative assigned to each project will therefore measure the actual
quantity of each work item. A project performance report will be submitted to the head
office on a monthly basis including forecasting the final budget and duration as shown
in Figure. 1. In practice, the predicting of the final budget and duration of projects will
start after four months have passed since large variations early in the life of a project
may exist. Among projects that are planned to complete in the second half of the
current fiscal year, prediction must be made for budget and duration needed to
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complete the project about six months in advance before the end of the fiscal year. This
procedure is required by the national budget office so that needed funding can then be
held over or additional budget will be provided to finish the projects that could not be
completed as originally planned. By a given procedure during construction, project
performance data are consequently very essential to help the executives to understand
the actual status of the project. Furthermore the data are crucial for managing cost and
time of highway construction. The earned value method is currently used as a tool to
evaluate the project status in terms of schedule and cost variances compared with
planned value which is normally based on a deterministic method like CPM (Chang,
2001). CPM scheduling in general creates an unrealistic expectation regarding project
schedule performance (Nassar et al., 2005). In addition, the earned value method
generally assumes either that the performance efficiency achieved up to the reporting
date remains unchanged throughout the rest of the project, or that the performance will
be as planned beyond the reporting date (Li et al., 2006). In the real world, there are,

Figure 1.
 ECAM however, factors such as traffic conditions, physical and weather conditions that
16,6 cannot be allowed as input data to the earned value technique. The earned value
technique, therefore, may not be used separately to forecast the final cost and duration
of the highway construction project. However, a earned value technique is useful to
identify the variance between planned schedule and actual performance.
This research is intended to develop models to forecast the final budget and
548 duration of a highway construction project during the construction stage. An artificial
neural network was chosen to be a tool to develop the models so as to forecast the final
budget and duration of a highway construction project during the construction stage
more accurately than the currently used method based on the earned value technique.
The developing models can enhance forecasting process and provide better results to
monitor and control the highway construction project handled by either the
Department of Highways of Thailand or any place in general. Additionally, better
national budget allocation will be improved due to the improvement of forecasting
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outcomes. In current practice, if the final budget obtained from the prediction is greater
than the original budget, additional budget will be requested from the national budget
office about six months before the end of the fiscal year. In terms of duration
perspective, if the project duration based on prediction tends to be delayed, a strict
monitoring process will then be applied to the project.

ANN model
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is a part of artificial intelligence (AI) which is similar
to architectural structure and functions like brain cells or the human nerve system,
learning from experience and reliably providing answers to complex problems.
Different ANNs exist, while newly developed ones have been developed to make the
most efficient solution. Among various network architectures, back propagation (BP)
networks learn from correct patterns and have gained wide application in engineering.
A typical BP network as shown in Figure 2 has an input layer, output layer and hidden
layer. A mapping relationship between input variables and output variables will be

Figure 2.
 explored during the training process. Designing BP network architecture includes Forecasting final
determining the number of input and output variables (i.e. neurons in input and output budget
layers) and selecting the number of hidden layers and neurons in each hidden layer.
The training efficiency and the precision of prediction may be affected by the number
of hidden layers and number of neurons in each hidden layer in a BP network. From
the study of past literature, it was found that no certain criteria to establish suitable
hidden layers. Networks with different numbers of hidden layers and numbers of 549
neurons in each hidden layer are tested. The network that can provide the most
accurate prediction will be selected.

Input analysis
Construction project data of 51 highway construction projects in Thailand between
2002 and 2007 were collected from project progress reports. The collected data are
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analyzed in order to find out factors that might affect project final budget and duration.
Two ANN models are created separately, the first one to forecast project final budget
and the second one to predict project duration. A process of selecting input variables is
the most important step in developing the forecasting model. The number of nodes of
the input data depends on lagged data, applied for investigating types of time series. In
general, the invention of forecasting a time series model has not been accepted on node
selection criteria of input. It is, therefore, necessary, to experiment for a set of input
parameters by adjusting the number of input nodes to find the best forms of
experiment to apply the data group to the model. The experiment of finding suitable
input variables can be conducted in many ways. The hypothesis of this research was
established from the concept proposed by Lee and Yum (1998) which divided the input
into two parts, the one reflecting continual data and the one reflecting the seasonal
cycle. After experimentation with several ANN models, it was found that eight factors
heavily affect the final budget: traffic volume, topography, weather conditions,
evaluating date, contract duration (day), construction budget (baht), percent of as
planned completion, and percent of actual completion, while five factors: work starting
date, evaluating date, contract duration (day), percent of as planned completion, and
percent of actual completion, greatly affect project duration. The best models,
therefore, are composed of input neurons, output neurons and hidden neurons as
shown in Figure 3 to forecast project final budget and Figure 4 to predict project
duration.

Training and testing of ANN models

A total of 1,022 valid data patterns were collected from project progress reports of 51
highway construction projects in Thailand between 2002 and 2007. Of them, 998
patterns were used for training from 49 projects with the range of construction budget
between 39.9 to 1,030 million bahts, while the range of construction duration was
between 210 to 1,306 days. The network with one hidden layer and 300 hidden neurons
has shown superior agreement to training patterns for budget forecasting while for
duration forecasting the network with two hidden layers and 300 hidden neurons has
shown superior agreement to training patterns. The obtained networks were then
applied to two projects data composed of 24 data patterns for testing as listed in
Table I. The first project composed of 15 data patterns is Route No. 302 project. Its final
budget and duration are 475 million bahts and 584 days respectively. The second
 ECAM
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550
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Figure 3.

project composed of nine data patterns is Route No. 22 project. Its final budget and
duration is 253 million bahts and 382 days respectively. The actual final budget of both
projects is less than the original budget because the actual quantity is less than the
original estimate. It should be mentioned that the test patterns must not participate in
training. The comparisons between actual and forecast results are detailed in Figures 5
and 6 which show that the trained network responds well to the 24 test patterns. The
results show good agreement between actual results and predicted results, with the mean
absolute percent errors (MAPE) for the testing patterns were 6.76 percent for duration
forecasting and 2.56 percent for final budget forecasting respectively. The MAPE
calculates the average of the absolute values of the difference between the forecast and
actual values and then expresses the difference as a percentage of the actual value.

Comparisons with the current method

Earned value project management is a well-known management system that integrates
cost, schedule and technical performance. It allows the calculation of cost and schedule
variances and performance indices and forecasts of project cost and schedule duration.
In order to measure the accuracy of the proposed models, therefore, the current method
used by the Department of Highways is used in contrast with the proposed methods. It
was adjusted from equations proposed by Christensen (1996) and Fleming and
 Forecasting final
budget

551
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Figure 4.

Koppelman (1994) as shown in equation (1) for estimating final budget and equation (2)
for predicting duration at completion. Since the department uses the unit price contract
and will pay its contractors based on the actual work performed by the contractors, it
then assumes that the actual cost of work performed in the earned value technique is
equal to the budget cost of work performed or earned budget as shown in Figure 1. The
CPI value in equations (1) and (2) is, therefore, equal to one. The 24 identical data
patterns used for testing the ANN models as listed in the Table I were then analyzed by
the current method. The results, obtained from both the proposed method and the
current method, were then compared with the actual data:

Contract budget
Estimate final budget ¼ ð1Þ
CPI £ SPI

Contract duration
Estimate duration ¼ : ð2Þ
CPI £ SPI
In order to evaluate the accuracy of each forecasting method, the MAPE and the mean
absolute deviation (MAD), were used. The MAD is used to measure the average
absolute deviation of observations from their forecasts. The MAPE and MAD of each
of the forecasting results are summarized in Table II. It was obviously found that the
forecasting results obtained from the ANN method were more accurate with less
deviation based on the MAPE and MAD values.
Figures 7-10 show that the accuracy of the forecast final budget and duration of
both the testing projects obtained by the proposed method, is very stable over the
 Downloaded by New York University At 12:42 30 January 2016 (PT)

16,6

552

Table I.

for testing
ECAM

The 24 data patterns

from two projects used
Forecast budget (million
Percent of completion Forecast duration (day) Baht)
Project Evaluating date Planned Actual Variance (%) ANN Current dethod ANN Current method

Route No.302 134 10.01 9.93 2 0.08 545 545 486 498
165 13.34 13.83 0.50 545 521 486 476
195 16.68 23.52 6.85 531 383 487 350
226 20.16 26.45 6.29 535 412 487 376
257 23.64 31.31 7.66 534 408 486 373
287 27.17 39.59 12.42 532 371 487 339
318 31.69 41.92 10.23 530 408 486 373
348 37.20 47.03 9.83 531 427 486 391
379 43.01 54.16 11.14 527 429 487 392
410 50.60 60.82 10.22 527 449 487 411
438 59.13 69.88 10.76 522 457 487 418
469 68.54 75.19 6.65 528 492 487 450
499 82.90 79.03 2 3.87 541 566 486 518
530 98.12 88.37 2 9.75 544 600 486 548
560 100.00 92.08 2 7.92 543 586 486 536
Route No.22 112 21.07 12.80 2 8.26 372 592 243 420
142 33.29 13.99 2 19.31 396 857 241 607
173 45.23 27.50 2 17.73 389 592 243 419
203 55.92 43.93 2 11.98 373 458 245 325
234 64.61 51.30 2 13.32 376 453 246 321
265 73.23 60.17 2 13.06 375 438 246 310
295 84.24 77.07 2 7.17 359 394 249 279
326 94.36 86.76 2 7.60 359 392 249 277
341 100.00 96.31 2 3.69 349 374 251 265
 Forecasting final
budget

553

Figure 5.
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Figure 6.

course of the projects compared with those obtained from the current method. The
accuracy tends to increase as the project duration increases. The current method has
clearly shown the weakness of the earned value indicators, SV and SVI, since the SV is
measured in monetary units and not in time units which makes it difficult to
understand (Vandevoorde and Vanhoucke, 2006). The SV always converges to 0 and
the SPI always converges to 1 towards the end of the project, indicating a perfect
performance even though the project is late. For the project Route No. 302, it was found
that the project was ahead of schedule was consequently; more budget has been earned
than expected according to the plan. As for the project Route No. 22, it was found that
the project was behind schedule; consequently less budget has been earned according
to the plan. As a result, using the current method to forecast final budget and duration
it can be concluded that the project budget and duration tend to decrease if the project
was ahead of schedule and tend to increase if the project was behind schedule. In
accordance with both projects as they advance toward completion, its SV and SPI
converge to 0 and 1 respectively. However, from the owner perspective, the SV and SPI
can be effectively used in order to control budget and schedule as it was planned
 ECAM
Project Route No. 302 Route No. 22
16,6
Final budget forecasting
Number of test patterns 15 9
Actual budget (million Bahts) 475 253
ANN forecast 487 246
554 MAPE (%) 2.44 2.77
MAD 11.61 6.99
Current method forecast 430 358
MAPE (%) 15.14 41.6
MAD 71.89 105.24
Final duration forecasting
Number of test patterns 15 9
Actual duration (days) 584 382
ANN forecast 534 372
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MAPE (%) 8.51 3.84

MAD 49.67 14.67
Table II. Current method forecast 470 506
Accuracy of the MAPE (%) 19.90 32.82
forecasting methods MAD 116.20 125.38

Figure 7.

because an owner has an obligation to pay a contractor an amount of money as

specified in the contract, but from the contractor point of view, the SV and SPI will
become unreliable indicators regarding the last third of the project as pointed out by
Lipke (2003).

Conclusion
This paper has presented a study of back-propagation neural networks for predicting
final budget and duration of highway construction projects by using the actual data
collected from 51 projects from the Department of Highways (2007) of Thailand. The
project data were divided into two groups. The first group reflects continual data while
the second group reflects seasonal cycle data. After experimenting with the ANN, it
was found that eight factors heavily affect the final budget: traffic volume, topography,
 Forecasting final
budget

555
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Figure 8.

Figure 9.

weather conditions, evaluating date, contract duration, construction budget, percent of

as planned completion, and percent of actual completion, while four factors: work
starting date, evaluating date, contract duration, percent of as planned completion, and
percent of actual completion, greatly affect project duration. By comparison with the
predicting results obtained from the current method adapted from the earned value
technique, it was found that the results obtained from ANN models were more accurate
and very stable for both project final budget and project duration forecasting. The
proposed method can provide the construction manager not only with better
forecasting results to manage the projects, but also with accurate information
according to budget and time needed to complete the project. The possibility of
over-budget and schedule delays can also be determined using forecasting results and
target plan. The current method based on the earned value technique, however, is still
very helpful in managing the highway projects, since it is used to measure and
 ECAM
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556

Figure 10.
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communicate the real physical progress of a project. The proposed method must be
integrated into the existing management system to provide forecasting results to
project staffs. An early warning of a project problem can be highlighted so that a
corrective action can be taken accordingly.

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Further reading
Chanloet, R. (2004), “An application of artificial neural network for time estimation model of
highway projects”, Master’s thesis, King Mongkut’s University of Technology, Thonburi.
Yeh, I.C. (1998), “Quantity estimating of building with logarithm-neuron networks”, Journal of
Construction Engineering and Management, Vol. 124 No. 5, pp. 374-80.
Zhang, G., Patuwo, B.E. and Hu, M.Y. (1998), “Forecasting with artificial neural networks:
the state-of-the-art”, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 35-62.

Corresponding author
Thammasak Rujirayanyong can be contacted at: tmsak@yahoo.com

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