ABSTRACT
The importance of early project planning is widely recognized for engineering construction projects. (CII 1986; Barrie and Paulson, 1984). Company historical data is a major source of information for developing project scope and cost estimates during conceptual planning when only limited amounts of projectspecific data are available. Despite the recognition of its importance, however, the compilation, storage, retrieval and use of project historical data in many engineering companies is still not effective. Furthermore, the current historical data cannot support integrated conceptual planning and design systems. Work by Serpell-Bley (1990) concluded that the improvement of capturing and using historical data is one of the most critical improvement areas in conceptual planning currently.
