A decision support system for super tall building development

Super tall building projects commonly inherit a slow and lengthy decision making process due to financial uncertainties, in spite of large investments. However, current decision‐making practices depend upon detailed cost estimating and scheduling during the design development phase and not rough cost estimating and scheduling during the schematic design phase. Discrepancies between a project budget and program with estimated construction cost and construction period often result in architect and consultants having to perform costly re‐design work. To mitigate these issues, this study proposes a decision support system (DSS) model. An interim design development phase is introduced between the schematic design phase and the design development phase. Design alternative generation, database, cost and schedule estimation modules are developed. The design alternative generation module provides design alternatives that change proportionately in response to increases or decreases in the number of building stories. The database module is established for cost and schedule estimation modules. The cost and schedule estimation modules produce construction costs and construction period for design alternatives. Finally, the proposed DSS is validated through the case study of an ongoing real super tall building. Ultimately, the new DSS can assist project control groups in performing efficient and financially beneficial decision making in terms of construction cost and construction period. This research provides a fundamental step towards the development of the DSS for super tall building projects. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.