【正文】 lation and cost management are clearly two of the most important management concernsin the intensely petitive environment of the construction industry. Consequently, it s very important for management to detect at an early stage of a project the actual or potential cost overruns. To remain petitive while generating profit, management needs to identify and adopt in novative cost management strategies. These strategies should allow them to identify and control early on factors that might adversely impact the cost of a project. To date, various methodologies have been developed for project cost control such as earned value system management. exception reporting, and cost trend analysis. However, none of these methods considers at a macro level the influence of many important factors (or attributes) such as waste, project management practices, change orders, and error/rework on the project cost. Existing methods of cost control focus on identifying and controlling line items (cost ponents) that have already experienced a cost escalation. In other words, existing methods of cost control relate to symptoms rather than the cause. What is required, however, is a paradigm shift. A new method is needed that, in addition to recognizing he symptoms, identifies and focuses our attention on the attributes that are a potential cause for escalation in the line items for a given project. The new paradigm should have the capability to analyze a given project while incorporating the past project performance data and the experience of the project team. This analysis should identify and suggest control of attributes such as management errors, regulatory approval, and error/rework, which have a potential to instigate cost escalation in the line item estimate. Moreover, it is of importance to identify and control these attributes before they influence the project cost. Identification of attributes that might be responsible for project cost escalation is not sufficient in itself. What is equally important is to control the influence of the identified attributes on the project cost. This would require developing a project cost control strategy to either eliminate or reduce the impact of identified attributes on the line items, thereby minimizing the expected methods of cost control do not assist management in developing a cost control strategy to minimize the impact of all such attributes on the project cost. The optimum strategy would identify and suggest control of a set of attributes to minimize the probable project cost escalation. To analyze and control the impact of these attributes on the project cost, it is important to collate the past project performance data available with the user firm. Furthermore, these data should be analyzed with respect to the new project characteristics by using an appropriate analytical medium. A puterized decision support system (DSS) would therefore be advantageous to assist the user in developing a suitable project cost control strategy. ATTRIBUTE VERSUS LINE ITEMS The tenn attribute (as used in the present paper) does not refer to the conventional tenn line items. However, it pertains to the factors that might be responsible for generating cost escalation in the line items of a project. The difference is emphasized to delineate the point of departure for this research. In recent years, many researchers have addressed the issue of cost control by using techniques such as Monte Carlo simulation, management exception reporting, and probabilistic estimating. Noheless, their research fothe variance in line items. However, from the cost management perspective, it would be more beneficial to identify the cause of variance in the line items, which, when controlled, would minimize the overall project cost escalation. During the estimating process for a given project, we might assume a certain state for attributes such as management errors, regulatory approval, error/rework, worker morale, and crew balance. The underlying concept of this research is that during the course of the project the assumed state of these attributes might change due to one reason or another. The change in state or loss of equilibrium of an attribute might not only influence certain other attributes but also might influence the line items that were estimated based on the assumed state of the attribute. This, in turn, might cause a percentage escalation in the estimated project cost. An attribute is considered to be in the active state if, over the course of the project, the cost or status of an attribute differs from what was assigned to it at the estimating stage. For example, the labor productivity obtained during the course of the project might differ from what was assumed at the es timating stage. Similarly, at the estimating stage, a nonactive status might be assigned to the attribute, management, or project team. However, there is a possibility that during the course of the project the management or project team might make a decision error, influencing many other attributes. This would change the nonactive status of the attribute, management, or project team, to an active state. The probability and the resulting cost impact of these events cannot be neglected. Attribute state is defined by using a binary mode, where state = 1 impli