Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Developing a Generative AI Platform for Construction Cost Management
The Futures of Systems, People and Projects (FUSP) laboratory, led by Dr Temitope Omotayo, Reader in Sustainable Construction and Digital Project Management, has been awarded a £1.18m Innovate UK grant to produce a generative AI platform for boosting the productivity and accuracy of cost planning in construction.
This new research project follows on from a successful feasibility study funded by Innovate UK. We have now been awarded follow-on funding to produce a “BIM-enabled Generative AI Platform for Productivity and Accuracy Enhancement of Construction Cost Planning (BIM-GAIcost)”.
The potentials of generative AI will become a useful tool to reduce cost overruns which are prevalent in 69% of projects and the 15% increase in UK construction costs. Our successful pilot project produced costplan.ai – we will now upgrade this with new features that merge a data-driven Building Information Modelling (BIM) for early cost advice through generative AI.
The prompting feature of the AI digital platform will enhance productivity by up to 85% by reducing the time taken to produce initial cost plans and produce accuracy measures for UK contractors and clients.
The research will enhance the web application – costplan.ai - to produce construction cost estimation documents through large language models (LLM) of cost data and support the automation of BIM cost related documents with accuracy indications to predict and avoid cost overruns in the planning phase.
This research will bridge the gap between SMEs and large construction companies by integrating the application of BIM, especially 5D BIM and Generative AI.
Generative AI has the potential to spur the diffusion of BIM in all construction business scales through its promoting and automation features to produce early cost plans for clients, cost planners, and prediction of accurate costs.
The project is a collaboration with Professor Jiamei Deng, Dr Shariful Shikder, and Dr Anderson Akponeware of the FUSP lab and the School of Built Environment, Engineering and Computing.
The project leading industry partner - Property Box Group Limited - will provide evidence of impact and validations along with Ernst and Young LLP, Milan Consulting Limited, Ardeo Limited, Birmingham City University and London South Bank University.
Dr Temitope Omotayo
Dr Temitope Omotayo is a Reader in Sustainable Construction and Digital Project Management and the research lead for the Futures of Systems, People and Projects (FUSP) lab.
