Research on Intelligent Cost Estimation of Engineering Foundation Projects Based on CSIs Theory

Abstract

Against the backdrop of rapid development in China’s construction and infrastructure sectors, discrepancies between project budgets and actual costs have become pronounced, manifesting in project overruns and suspensions, posing significant challenges. To address inaccuracies in investment targets and operational complexities, this study focuses on a beam-bridge construction project in a district of Shijiazhuang city as a case study. Drawing upon historical analogs, the project employs a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to decompose the engineering works. Building on theories of Cost Significant (CS) and Whole Life Costing (WLC), the study constructs Cost Significant Items (CSIs) and develops a CNN-BiLSTM-Attention neural network for nonlinear prediction. By identifying significant cost drivers in engineering projects, this paper presents a streamlined cost estimation method that significantly reduces computational burdens, simplifies data collection processes, and optimizes data analysis and forecasting, thereby enhancing prediction accuracy. Finally, validation with real-world cost fluctuation data demonstrates minor errors, meeting predictive requirements across project execution phases.