Roofing tiles or slates? A network analysis of factors influencing architect choice

Tiles and slates are the two most commonly used roofing materials worldwide, yet many customers and construction professionals are frequently unsure about which product to choose. In this article, a network analysis based on a Bayesian machine learning approach was used to identify which are the main factors and how they influence architect decision about roofing tiles or slates. For that, the information collected from a survey conducted to 429 architects working in the Spanish construction sector was used to create a Bayesian network model that represents the conditional dependencies of the variables considered when the decision is taken. The results obtained allow to unveil aesthetic as the main factor conditioning architect decision for roofing tiles. In turn, the decision is more complex when roofing slates, since architects apart from the price they strongly considered the ability of installers in the decision process.