Application of Fuzzy Expert Systems for Construction Labor Productivity Estimation

Fuzzy Expert Systems have been used to solve complex
problems efficiently in the case where information available is in descriptive
form rather than quantitative number. This study has
aimed to use Fuzzy expert systems to estimate the labor production
rates through incorporating the influence of qualitative
and quantitative factor. Production rate values of concreting of
columns and their influential factors have been collected from
questionnaire survey. Overall ten influential factors of qualitative
and quantitative nature are selected for collecting the data
during questionnaire survey based on the Likert scale of 1 to 5.
Fuzzy expert system developed in this study has been compared
with the two previously used Fuzzy expert systems for productivity
estimation. Performance of the previous systems and system
developed in this study has been compared by calculating Root
Mean Square Error. The findings revealed that system developed
in the study gives high linguistic and numerical accuracies as
compare to the previous systems with least Root Mean Square
Error. Hence, the developed Fuzzy expert system can be used
reliably for estimating labor productivity by the construction
Industry.