Cognitive errors of judgement, learning style characteristics and clients' early cost advisors

The formulation of early stage building project cost advice for clients requires professionals to exercise judgement. The exercise of judgement is a human cognitive process that can be subject to errors, bias and heuristics. The propensity to make errors is an individual human characteristic. Humans may have their characteristics classified by their preferred learning style. This work seeks to ascertain whether there is a link between an individual's learning style and the type of errors made in the formulation of strategic cost advice. The paper reports the development of an appropriate measuring instrument and the results of its application to a group of thirty four subjects. The subjects were a convenient sample drawn from two cohorts of final stage part-time degree students in quantity surveying. Subjects were tested to ascertain their propensity to make errors and their preferred learning style. The responses were analysed using regression analysis. The results of the work revealed no correlation between error and preferred learning style. The paper concludes by setting out the case for further work in this area with professionals being asked to make intuitive judgements about issues related to their own field of expertise.