Radial Basis Function (RBF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) Comparative Analysis on Building Renovation Cost Estimation: The Case of Greece

Renovation of buildings has become a major area of development for the construction industry. In the building construction sector, generating a precise and trustworthy cost estimate before building begins is the greatest challenge. Emphasizing the value of using ANN models to forecast the total cost of a building renovation project is the ultimate objective. As a result, building firms may be able to avoid financial losses as long as there is as little discrepancy between projected and actual costs for remodeling works in progress. To address the gap in the research, Greek contractors specializing in building renovations provided a sizable dataset of real project cost data. To build cost prediction ANNs, the collected data had to be organized, assessed, and appropriately encoded. The network was developed, trained, and tested using IBM SPSS Statistics software 28.0.0.0. The dependent variable is the final cost. The independent variables are initial cost, estimated completion time, actual completion time, delay time, initial and final demolition-drainage costs, cost of expenses, initial and final plumbing costs, initial and final heating costs, initial and final electrical costs, initial and final masonry costs, initial and final construction costs of plasterboard construction, initial and final cost of bathrooms, initial and final cost of flooring, initial and final cost of frames, initial and final cost of doors, initial and final cost of paint, and initial and final cost of kitchen construction. The first procedure that was employed was the radial basis function (RBF). The efficiency of the RBFNN model was evaluated and analyzed during training and testing, with up to 6% sum of squares error and nearly 0% relative error in the training sample, which accounted for roughly 70% of the total sample. The second procedure implemented was the method called the multi-layer perceptron (MLP). The efficiency of the MLPNN model was assessed and examined during training and testing; the training sample, which made up around 70% of the overall sample, had a relative error of 0–7% and a sum of squares error ranging from 1% to 5%, confirming specifically the efficacy of RBFNN in calculating the overall cost of renovations.