Use of artificial intelligence for estimating cost of integral bridges

Estimation of costs is important in every phase of realisation of construction projects. However, the influence of cost estimation is the highest in early phases as it is then that the decision about accepting the job or withdrawing from the project is made. The quantity of data available in initial phases of the project is smaller compared to subsequent phases, which affects accuracy of cost estimation in such early phases. A research making use of artificial intelligence to estimate construction costs of integral road bridges is presented in the paper. The estimation model is prepared by means of neural networks. The best neural network model has proven to be highly accurate in the estimation of costs based on the mean absolute error, which amounts to 13.40 %.