Factors affecting the selection of building project pricing forecasting tools

Abstract

This thesis contributes to what is known about the investigation and formulation phases of the building project price forecasting advice process. The research has developed a greater understanding of what general factors affect the selection of non-traditional types of building project price forecasting models. The thesis adopted a two-phased combined research approach. The first phase required a population mailed survey to be executed with over two thousand three hundred quantity surveying organisations located across England in 1997. The second phase required thirty-one in-depth interviews to be executed, with informed practitioners, in five rounds of data collection. Consequently, this research firstly, established the types of building project price forecasting models or tools in-use in England. The study found that the called for paradigm shift away from the traditional types of models, had not yet been generally achieved. The study provided evidence that some types of quantity surveying organisations were moving towards the adoption of the non-traditional models, for use as additional tools. The study then, secondly, identified a number of general factors that were found to affect the selection of non-traditional types of building project price forecasting models. The thesis concluded by generating a grounded constraints-based theory of factors found to affect the selection of non-traditional types of building project price forecasting models. The emergent theory identified the parameters needed to enable all types of quantity surveying organisations to become involved with the selection of non-traditional models or tools.