ITcon Vol. 28, pg. 220-245, http://www.itcon.org/2023/11

An Ontology-Based Cost Estimation for Offsite Construction

DOI:10.36680/j.itcon.2023.011
submitted:September 2022
revised:March 2023
published:April 2023
editor(s):Esther Obonyo
authors:Edlira Vakaj, Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Build Environment, Birmingham City University
Edlira.Vakaj@bcu.ac.uk

Franco Cheung, Associate Professor
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Build Environment, Birmingham City University
Franco.Cheung@bcu.ac.uk

Jianpeng Cao, Ph.D. Student
Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management, ETH Zurich
cao@ibi.baug.ethz.ch

Abdel-Rahman H. Tawil, Associate Professor
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Build Environment, Birmingham City University
Abdel-Rahman.Tawil@bcu.ac.uk

Panagiotis Patlakas, Associate Professor
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Build Environment, Birmingham City University
Panagiotis.Patlakas@bcu.ac.uk
summary:Design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA) has been widely applied to support the decision-making process in offsite construction. With a DfMA approach, cost estimation requires taking product design and production processes into consideration. Current studies conduct cost estimation built upon quantity take-offs. However, they do not provide a vocabulary to relate cost estimates to offsite construction processes. This paper presents a new domain ontology, Offsite Housing Ontology (OHO) using the NeOn methodology framework to support cost estimation considering products, resources, and production processes. OHO semantically defines offsite construction domain terminology and relationships. This supports a unified model, required for efficient collaborative design management. The efficiency and effectiveness of the OHO approach are demonstrated in a real-world DfMA scenario through the development of a Knowledge-Based Engineering tool to automate cost estimation. The approach can be adapted and extended to accommodate a very wide range of offsite housing, delivering important optimization and automation benefit from DfMA solutions.
keywords:Offsite Construction, Ontology Engineering, Building Information Modeling, DfMA, Linked Building Data
full text: (PDF file, 1.357 MB)
citation:Vakaj E, Cheung F, Cao J, Tawil A-R H, Patlakas P (2023). An Ontology-Based Cost Estimation for Offsite Construction, ITcon Vol. 28, pg. 220-245, https://doi.org/10.36680/j.itcon.2023.011
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