Expert and decision-support system approaches for construction project financing and cash flow management for large infrastructure projects

Reliable cash flow prediction and strategic project financing plans are essential to large infrastructure developers not only in terms of acquiring sufficient funding for the project with optimal capital structure, but also in terms of minimizing risks. Due to the uniqueness and uncertainty characteristics of construction projects, many project-specific decisions are needed to predict cash flow and arrange project financing. To facilitate the decision-making process for the developers, algorithms of mathematical models for cash flow prediction and project financing planning were developed based on the knowledge base populated from domain experts. Further, an expert and decision-support system, FINADVISOR, was developed to help developers predict construction cash flows and develop strategic project financing plans through Public-Private-Partnership arranged asset-based project financing. Large airport projects were used as the testbed infrastructure. The results of the system evaluation exercise indicate that the model closely reproduced the opinions of the domain experts and that the system outputs were correct and consistent. The domain experts concluded that the decision quality would be improved by employing FINADVISOR in their decision-making process.