ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the potential of big data for construction cost management. It outlines what constitutes big data and provides some theoretical explanations for the big data phenomenon, citing Herbert A. Simon's bounded rationality theory amongst others. The chapter discusses the prospects of big data for construction cost management, such as changing the mentality around sharing big data and the ethics. It reviews the challenges of applying innovative big data methods to an arguably conventional profession and posits building information model (BIM) as one possible information platform to collect, store, and utilise big data for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) practices. AEC activities, including construction cost management, can be perceived as making an array of decision-making per se based on available information and knowledge. Data sources in the life cycle are massive and complicated, comprising big data for providing a great deal of information for decision-making in cost management.
