Salama, M; Al-Sharif, F; Kaka, A P and Leishman, C (2006) Cost modelling for standardised design projects. In: Boyd, D (ed.) Proceedings of 22nd Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2006, Birmingham, UK.
Abstract
In 1992, the Egyptian government launched the national project for building 1500 schools every year. Over the period 1993-2005 more than 15000 schools have been built and still there is an on going demand due to the demographic factors besides the political inclination to erode illiteracy as a proactive national security measure. The share of school buildings in the national budget is increasing. Over the last three five-year plans, the total expenditure on school projects exceeded 13bn Egyptian Pounds. This paper aims at develop a price-forecasting model for school buildings in Egypt in an attempt to optimise the deployment of the scarce resources of the developing country. The model developed based on data collected in Egypt for actual prices of 120 schools built over the period 1994-2005 to predict the cost of school projects in the initial stage using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The study benefits of the unique attribute of this national project that implements standardized design hence reducing the number of product variables and providing further in-depth analysis of the effect of other variables. The developed model besides being simple and may be easily comprehended by practitioners in Egypt, when tested, reflected high accuracy.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | cost modelling; LDC; mark-up; standardised design |
| Index terms: | accuracy, forecasting, developing country, mark-up, Egypt, modelling, practitioner, demographic factor, school building |
| Subjects: | Geography, development economics, professional development, price determination, demography, practitioner, construction type, prediction and forecasting, analytical methods |
| Topics: | Information Management, Engineering Principles, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Roles and Professions, Procurement, Construction Technology, Urban Studies, International Construction |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here