Cost estimation is the most important preliminary process in any construction project. Therefore, construction cost estimation has the lion’s share of the research effort in construction management. In this paper, we have analysed and studied proposals for construction cost estimation for the last 10 years. To implement this survey, we have proposed and applied a methodology that consists of two parts. The first part concerns data collection, for which we have chosen special journals as sources for the surveyed proposals. The second part concerns the analysis of the proposals. To analyse each proposal, the following four questions have been set. Which intelligent technique is used? How have data been collected? How are the results validated? And which construction cost estimation factors have been used? From the results of this survey, two main contributions have been produced. The first contribution is the defining of the research gap in this area, which has not been fully covered by previous proposals of construction cost estimation. The second contribution of this survey is the proposal and highlighting of future directions for forthcoming proposals, aimed ultimately at finding the optimal construction cost estimation. Moreover, we consider the second part of our methodology as one of our contributions in this paper. This methodology has been proposed as a standard benchmark for construction cost estimation proposals. 1. Introduction Information technology (IT) plays a crucial role in dealing with challenges in construction projects. Thomas et al. [1] have illustrated the importance of using IT to improve the performance of construction projects. The construction industry faces numerous complicated challenges that go beyond IT. These complicated challenges motivate the use of intelligent techniques to handle those challenges. For instance, intelligent techniques may be used to handle challenges such as (1) selecting the best-qualified prime contractor, (2) predicting project performance at different phases, or (3) estimating risk for cost overruns (running beyond a proper plan may lead to greater risks for many contractors). Recently, the civil engineering community has begun to consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques as an optimal art for handling the above 3 fuzzy and ambiguous challenges [2]. The use of AI in the civil engineering sector has been introduced by Parmee [3], who proposes for AI to tackle problem areas characterised by uncertainty and poor definition. Cost estimation is the most important preliminary process in any
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