A visual approach to the analysis of curve profile: a case in construction industry

There are many qualitative and quantitative techniques which have been used for a variety of cases of curve fitting, smoothing and forecasting. All but a few have considered curves from a shape-geometry point of view. The paper argues that curve geometry contains characteristics that are descriptive of the nature of the subject area and therefore provides a viable alternative for the generation of a forecast. In spite of its importance for the success and survival of construction contracting companies, cash flow forecasting and management hasn't been extensively studied by researchers or practitioners. The increased research activity in this field during the 1980s failed to result in the development of a universally accepted alternative to the traditional method of time-related elemental cost build-up. Many of these attempts sought to develop a viable alternative by focusing on mathematical approaches. The non-mathematical approaches to forecasting expenditure flow of construction projects offer a clear explanation as to the origin and nature of the resulting forecast, whereas the mathematical approach to forecasting has the advantage of being simple, cheap and fast. These, mutually exclusive features of the different approaches to model development have lead this work to investigate the possibility of developing a mechanism for mathematical models to facilitate some degree of understanding about the behaviour of project expenditure profile and hence overcome the black-box nature of the mathematical solutions.