Incorporating Machine Learning into a Data Warehouse for Real-Time Construction Projects Benchmarking

Machine Learning is a process of using computer algorithms to extract information from raw data to solve complex problems in a data-rich environment. It has been used in the construction industry by both academics and practitioners for multiple applications to improve the construction process. The Construction Industry Institute, a leading construction research organization has twenty-five years of experience in benchmarking capital projects in the industry. The organization is at an advantage to develop useful machine learning applications because it possesses enormous real construction data. Its benchmarking programs have been actively used by owner and contractor companies today to assess their capital projects' performance. A credible benchmarking program requires statistically valid data without subjective interference in the program administration. In developing the next-generation benchmarking program, the Data Warehouse, the organization aims to use machine learning algorithms to minimize human effort and to enable rapid data ingestion from diverse sources with data validity and reliability. This research effort uses a focus group comprised of practitioners from the construction industry and data scientists from a variety of disciplines. The group collaborated to identify the machine learning requirements and potential applications in the program. Technical and domain experts worked to select appropriate algorithms to support the business objectives. This paper presents initial steps in a chain of what is expected to be numerous learning algorithms to support high-performance computing, a fully automated performance benchmarking system.