A Comparison of the Neural Network Approach and the Earned Value Management in Predicting Final Cost and Duration of Projects

In construction project management, success in the controlling of projects’ final cost .Also duration is a critical issue that can help managers. The main purpose of the management of construction projects is to ensure that the projects can be performed according to the defined budget. Cost and duration overrun may lead to profits cut and sometimes even can cause project failure. To solve this problem, this study employs the earned value technique and the neural networks to form models EAC-ANN and EAC (t) -ANN for final cost and duration prediction. For input variables in neural network, two sets of variables have been employed, including the earned values variables and composite ones. Composite variables also include the earned value variables and environmental ones. Then the performance of the earned value techniques in predicting final cost and duration is considered. Moreover, the influence of each data set in neural network models on the cost and duration prediction performance is compared separately to yield a better model. The results show that the neural networks outperform earned value management technique. Furthermore, using a neural network based on the composite data can lead to better performance than the one based on the earned value data.