Expert Systems in Construction: Work in Progress

Construction planning, engineering, management and maintenance are receiving increasing attention as possible application domains for knolwedge-based expert systems. Although oportunities for this new computer technology to impact both research and practice appear to be substantial, there a few successes to date. A recent survey of work in progress shows that there are many potentials for major impacts. The developmental systems from this survey are summarized to indicate their concept kernels, implementation environments and principal developers. The authors also advance several ideas as to why this application domain is receiving so much attention and why the construction industry will benefit from these developments.