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While benefiting from a positive business environment over the last 10 years, the European construction industry is currently facing rising price pressures and a fiercer global competitive environment shaped by mounting construction costs, fast-track schedules and the increasing generation of vast quantities of documentation. In this context, IDC believes that the following issues must be actively considered:
- Increasing heterogeneity of project participants. A wide range of professionals is involved in a construction project. Project participants such as architects, engineers, construction companies, outsourced subcontractors, suppliers, facility management firms, owners and tenants have very different information requirements. The lack of accurate and timely information exchange between these parties is at the heart of historical inefficiencies, cost overruns and inter-party disputes. In this context strong project management capabilities also become increasingly indispensable.
- Geographic dispersion and increasing globalisation. The construction environment is becoming more and more global with different construction sites now needing to be reached worldwide. Therefore, fast building site deployment and real-time monitoring and information exchange systems are crucial to complete geographically dispersed projects on time and to budget.
- A changing regulatory framework. Today, new construction must be compliant with old and new regulations including those based on the Kyoto Protocol on energy consumption in buildings. This involves additional consultants in the project, additional construction phases and the need to develop and manage a new set of skills. Also, collaboration with public offices becomes part of the value chain.
The Role of ICT and Networking Services in Promoting Collaboration
Traditionally, the construction industry as a whole has shown relatively slow progress in ICT investments due to the high percentage of small and medium enterprises. This slow progress contrasts somewhat with the more innovative approach being taken by the major construction companies. In addition, there are high levels of service customisation (e.g., the need to be onsite) and an organisational culture often characterised by conservative attitudes towards ICT investments.
Nevertheless, results from recent IDC surveys demonstrate that construction firms are investing more than in the past in supporting new initiatives and implementing innovative IT solutions. Among the latter, collaborative technologies become a critical success factor throughout the whole design and building process of a construction project.
What Are Collaborative Technologies?
These are defined as integrated collaborative environments providing a framework for electronic collaboration. In this space key tools are email, intranet, group calendaring and scheduling, shared folders/databases, shared network directories, threaded discussions, instant-messaging applications, and audio-, Web- and videoconferencing applications.
Internal and External Collaboration
Collaborative technologies can be used to enhance the internal integration of company workflows in construction firms as well as improving external processes in order to coordinate activities with third-party stakeholders and agents around construction projects.
- Internal collaboration is guaranteed by the digital integration of internal processes though enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, electronic document management (EDM) software, online applications managing capacity/inventories and tracking working hours over the Internet. In addition, the deployment of appropriate intranet facilities enables construction employees and workers to systematically gather and disseminate information through the use of elearning tools and knowledge management software.
- External collaboration ensures increased interoperability and implementation among all project participants by establishing a common platform for project cooperation. Essentially, these systems rely on ICT tools such as online document sharing, collaborative design processes applications and applications for joint forecast demand.
A Real-Life Example: Project Web Applications
Both internal and external collaboration in a construction project can be significantly supported and improved by the deployment of project Web applications. These are tools that implement a process where all workflows are gathered into a single online and digital platform that can be used by all the relevant stakeholders in a construction project. Project Web applications are therefore effective project management tools ensuring real-time, secure and accurate information exchange among architects, engineers, construction management, contractors, subcontractors and clients/owners. By adopting project Web applications, construction companies can benefit from a considerable reduction in communication delays and errors while improving auditing capabilities and saving building time.
As an example, Bouygues Construction, a French construction enterprise with a turnover of more than €5.5 billion and more than 38,000 employees in 60 different countries, first adopted project Web solutions in 2000, using them systematically for all big construction projects exceeding 50 different stakeholders
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