Strategic building project price forecasting models in use: Paradigm shift postponed

Good quality early stage building project price advice needs to be formulated reliably and then transmitted effectively to clients in order for appropriate decisions to be made. In the UK, quantity surveyors are most often the construction professionals charged with the task of determining such early stage building project price forecasts. Little is known about the factual selection and use of the building project price forecasting model(s) used by construction professionals when formulating cost strategic advice for clients. This paper reports on research using a nation-wide mailed survey conducted with all 2,327 separate quantity surveying organisations located in England. The survey attracted an overall adjusted response rate of 63.9%. The results indicated that, in general terms, practitioners have not yet answered the call of academia to adopt the newer-computer based stochastic models that assess project risk and uncertainty. Models that provide traditional single point deterministic building project price forecasts continue to be the most popular type of model used by practitioners involved with the formulation of strategic cost for clients. The data generated was analysed using the Minitab 10 for Windows statistical package and this revealed that organisational location within England does not have a significant affect on the incidence of-use of individual models. The analysis has also indicated that organisational "type" is a significant factor in the incidence-of-use of particular models. This was especially evident in multi-disciplinary practices and project management type organisations which both had a higher incidence-of-use than expected for the newer computer-based stochastic models. The data collected from organisations based in the north of England in 1997 has also been analysed in connection with data collected from a similar survey conducted with organisations based in the north of England in 1993. The results of this analysis indicated that models providing traditional single point deterministic building project price forecasts have a reduced incidence-of-use over that time period and that there has been some increase in the use of the newer computer-based models. However, that increase in the incidence-of-use was found to be not statistically significant. The paper concludes by asserting that although the paradigm shift in practice relating to the formulation of reliable early cost advice has not yet been generally achieved there is some evidence that amongst certain organisational types it may as yet only be postponed.