The authors developed the definition of construction defect and fault and construction defect management based on Polish and foreign publications. In order to assist identification of faults and their analysis in the process of home collection, the authors applied the Case Based Reasoning (CBR) method. In the paper, the authors used Case Based Reasoning (CBR) to support acceptance of apartments. The CBR method allows to determine the magnitude of global similarity for the problem under consideration between the new and old case from the Case Base, using weighted sums of local similarities using criteria weights as coefficients. As a result of CBR-based solutions, an Employer’s representative receives information about the type of construction defects that can be expected, their location and significance, occurrence frequency, and estimated repair cost.

One of the contract awarding systems in public sector in Poland is the Design & Build system. In this system, a client concludes a contract agreement with only one company, a contractor, in order to carry out both design and construction of works. While deciding on this form of delivery of a public project, the client is obliged to conduct a single proceeding aiming to select the contractor. In this paper, public works contracts awarded in the D&B system in Poland are analysed, whilst attention was put on the contracting modes and assessment criteria. The results are assessed against the experience of other countries and recommended methods for selection of the Design and Build contractor.

The model for estimating the whole life costs of the building life cycle that allows the quantification of the risk addition lets the investor to compare buildings at the initial stage of planning a construction project in terms of the following economic criteria: life cycle costs (LCC), whole life costs (WLC), life cycle equivalent annual costs (LCEAC) and cost addition for risk (ΔR_LCC). The subsequent stages of the model development have been described in numerous publications of the authors, while the aim of this paper is to check the accuracy of the model in the case of changing the parameters that may affect the results of calculations. The scope of the study includes: comparison of the results generated by the model with the solutions obtained in the life cycle net present value method (LCNPV) for time and financial input data, not burdened with the risk effect; the analysis of the variability of results due to changes in input data; analysis of the variability of results as a consequence of changing the sets of membership functions for input data and methods for defuzzification the result.

The paper presents an approach to evaluating a building throughout its whole life cycle in relation to its sustainable development. It describes basic tools and techniques of evaluating and analysing the costs in the whole life cycle of the building, such as Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Management, Life Cycle Cost and Social Life Cycle Assessment. The aim of the paper is to propose a model of cost evaluation throughout the building life cycle. The model is based on the fuzzy sets theory which allows the calculations to include the risks associated with the sustainable development, with the management of the investment and with social costs. Costs incurred in the subsequent phases of the building life cycle are analysed and modelled separately by means of a membership function. However, the effect of the analysis is a global cost evaluation for the whole life cycle of the building.