Using Data Mining Techniques to Support Value Management Workshops in Construction

Problem-solving processes in value management (VM) workshops in the construction industry are experience-based, and the quality of these workshops depends very much on the experience of the team members. The efficiency and effectiveness of VM workshops can be improved by better reusing the experience of previous VM cases and field knowledge. This paper describes a new approach to facilitate VM workshops in the construction industry using data mining (DM) techniques. The feasibility of integrating DM techniques with VM workshops in the construction industry is demonstrated in case studies. Examples are presented to illustrate different methods of applying DM tools in VM workshops. The results show that DM techniques can help team members in VM workshops to understand their problems more clearly and to generate more ideas for current problems.