Predicting the Outcome of Construction Litigation Using Boosted Decision Trees

Construction litigation has become commonplace in numerous construction projects, particularly in large contracts. Miscommunication, inadequate plans and specifications, rigid contracts, changes in site conditions, nonpayment, catch up profits, limitations on manpower, tools, and equipment, improper supervision, notice requirements, constructive changes not recognized as such by owner, delays, and acceleration measures provoke claims and often result in disputes. A boosted decision tree system was used to predict the outcome of construction litigation. The study was conducted by using the same 114 Illinois court cases that were used in earlier prediction studies conducted with artificial neural networks in 1998 and case-based reasoning in 1999, augmented by an additional 18 cases that were filed in 1990–2000. All cases were extracted from the Westlaw on-line service. The best prediction result obtained with boosted decision trees was 90%. The boosted decision tree model appears to be a promising tool to help create a dispute-free construction industry.