A Decision Support System for Earth Moving Planning at the Bidding Stage

Abstract

Earth moving projects are commonly involved in the construction industry for tasks such as road construction, pipeline installation, surface mining, and so on. All the operations in earth moving projects are completed by a fleet of different construction equipment. Since earth moving projects take place in exposed fields, the circumstance associated make these projects full of uncertainties. Through interviews with engineers from construction companies, it was found that traditional planning methods lack sufficient assessment of risks in earth moving projects, which increases the probability of cost or duration overrun. Therefore, this thesis research aimed to develop a decision support system for earth moving planning at the bidding stage. Using artificial neural networks and simulation as the main research tools, the developed decision support system can analyze the impacts of potential risks in earth moving projects. It can help construction companies understand the effects of risks in earth moving projects to aid in decision making at the bidding stage and improvement of companies’ risk management. A new earth moving template that is convenient for industrial practitioners to do estimation and risk analysis is also developed.