Case Problem HERITAGE HOMES More and more young couples are buying older houses and remodeling them as a way of avoiding the high costs of building. In the Wilmington, Delawarc, arca, about a half-dozen construction fims specialize in remodeling. One is Heritage Homes, owned by Alvin and James Bradberry. The Bradberrys have received a disproportionately large share of the remodeling business because of their ability to come in with lower bids than other firms. When contractors receive invitations to bid, they meet with the owners to inspect the house. To make accurate bids, the contractors must be able to visualize from the owners descriptions and their own observations the work that will be required and then estimate the cost. Because the contractors know they invariably will encounter some unanticipated diffi. culties once work begins, they add a cushion to their bids. The Bradberys know their business so well that they do not have to add much of a cushion. That has been the key to their success. One rainy morning. when the Bradberrys can't work outdoors, they are in the office talking about their computer-based proposal preparation system. Alvin has written some programs that compute certain materials costs, and James has developed a word processing file used in preparing the written documents. Alvin: What do you think about us using an expert system to do our bidding? I've been doing some reading and that seems to be the coming thing. I doubt if any other contractors have such a system and it might help us keep our competitive edge. JAMES: I read the same article that you did but I'm not convinced that those systems are good as they're made out to be. For one thing, you need an expert. Who would that be? Awe Us. We're the experts. We know this business better than anybody else. We hit every bid right on the nose. All we have to do is get our knowledge inside the computer-and watch out ynoke! JAMES: I'm not sure I could describe what goes through my head as / work up the bid. It just comes naturally. ALVIN: Oh, I think if you stick with anything long enough, you can do it. I wrote those materials cost programs with no sweat. JAMES: But you don? have time for a lot of programming. There are more important things for you to do. ALVIN: I could do it in my spare time. We're in no big hurry. JAMES: Well. It would be nice if we didnr have to spend so much time on the bids. If we could do it faster, we could do more bidding and get more jobs. I'm convinced that there is an unlimited Case Problem continued supply of remodeling jobs in Wilmington, and we've always talked about branching out to other cities. ALVIN: Exactly. Maybe over the next few months, we could keep notes as we work up the bids- you know, write down what's going through our minds. JAMES: That's not a bad idea. We always carry a clipboard with us when we check out a house. We could just be more detailed in our note taking. ALVIN: After we accumulate a good set of notes, we might work up a form that we could fill out for each job-enter all the data, such as number of rooms, room size, condition of the wiring, plumbing, and so on. Then it would be a simple matter of entering the data from the form into the expert system. JAMES: Sounds good. Say, it's stopped raining. Let's get to work. We can daydream some other time. ASSIGNMENT 1. Does this sound like a good expert system application? Explain. 2. Do you think that Alvin and James qualify as experts? Why or why not? 3. Should they develop the system themselves or let someone else do it? Support your answer. 4. Assuming that an expert system is produced, how could Alvin and James benefit