Construction Industry collaboration challenges

Abstract

The UK Construction Industry was quick to recognise the benefits of web based collaboration. Many `Extranet' service providers emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, who in the main offered a shared service for user management, document management and a selection of project management tools to construction projects. Despite over five years of wide spread adoption, the impact has been largely restricted to controlled file sharing with little improvement in information sharing procedures or practice and also no discernable impact on integrated design. The collaborative services supply side of the industry is beginning to take note of the need to provide process management services as well as improve user engagement, but it is unlikely that collaborative service providers can resolve the challenge the industry faces in delivering concurrent design through an integrated supply chain. The pattern displayed in the UK is being mirrored in the United States where collaborative technology adoption is being limited to file sharing Extranets with little visible move to change work processes or adopt collaborative design through building information models or alternate object based design approaches.