Project delays are the major problems tackled by the construction sector owing to the associated complexity and uncertainty in the construction activities. Artificial Intelligence (AI) models have evidenced their capacity to solve dynamic, uncertain and complex tasks. The aim of this current study is to develop a hybrid artificial intelligence model called integrative Random Forest classifier with Genetic Algorithm optimization (RF-GA) for delay problem prediction. At first, related sources and factors of delay problems are identified. A questionnaire is adopted to quantify the impact of delay sources on project performance. The developed hybrid model is trained using the collected data of the previous construction projects. The proposed RF-GA is validated against the classical version of an RF model using statistical performance measure indices. The achieved results of the developed hybrid RF-GA model revealed a good resultant performance in terms of accuracy, kappa and classification error. Based on the measured accuracy, kappa and classification error, RF-GA attained 91.67%, 87% and 8.33%, respectively. Overall, the proposed methodology indicated a robust and reliable technique for project delay prediction that is contributing to the construction project management monitoring and sustainability.

Construction cost estimation is one of the essential processes in construction management. Project cost is a complex engineering problem due to various factors affecting the construction industry. Accurate cost estimation is important in construction management and significantly impacts project performance. Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been effectively implemented in construction management studies in recent years owing to their capability to deal with complex problems. In this research, extreme gradient boosting is developed as an advanced input selector algorithm and coupled with three AI models, including random forest (RF), artificial neural network (ANN), and support vector machine (SVM) for cost estimation. Datasets were gathered based on a survey conducted on 90 building projects in Iraq. Statistical indicators and graphical methods were used to evaluate the developed models. Several input predictors were used, and XGBoost highlighted inflation as the most crucial parameter. The results indicated that the best prediction was attained by XGBoost‐RF using six input parameters, with r‐squared and the mean absolute percentage error equal to 0.87 and 0.25, respectively. The comparison results revealed that all AI models showed good prediction performance when applied to datasets affected by more than two parameters. The outcomes of this research revealed an optimistic strategy that can help decision makers select the influencing parameters in the early phases of project management. Also, developing a prediction model with high precision results can assist the project’s estimators in decreasing the errors in the cost estimation process.

The hydrological process has a dynamic nature characterised by randomness and complex phenomena. The application of machine learning (ML) models in forecasting river flow has grown rapidly. This is owing to their capacity to simulate the complex phenomena associated with hydrological and environmental processes. Four different ML models were developed for river flow forecasting located in semiarid region, Iraq. The effectiveness of data division influence on the ML models process was investigated. Three data division modeling scenarios were inspected including 70%–30%, 80%–20, and 90%–10%. Several statistical indicators are computed to verify the performance of the models. The results revealed the potential of the hybridized support vector regression model with a genetic algorithm (SVR-GA) over the other ML forecasting models for monthly river flow forecasting using 90%–10% data division. In addition, it was found to improve the accuracy in forecasting high flow events. The unique architecture of developed SVR-GA due to the ability of the GA optimizer to tune the internal parameters of the SVR model provides a robust learning process. This has made it more efficient in forecasting stochastic river flow behaviour compared to the other developed hybrid models.