Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view

Construction informatics in Turkey: strategic role of ICT and future research directions

Construction Informatics deals with subjects ranging from strategic management of ICTs to interoperability and information integration in the construction industry. Studies on defining research directions for Construction Informatics have a history over 20 years. The recent studies in the area highlight the priority themes for Construction Informatics research as interoperability, collaboration support, intelligent sites and knowledge sharing. In parallel, today it is widely accepted in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry that ICT is becoming a strategic asset for any organisation to deliver business improvement and achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, traditionally the AEC industry has approached investing in ICT with a lack of strategic focus and low level of priority to the business. This paper presents a recent study from Turkey that is focused on two themes. The first theme investigates the strategic role of ICT implementations from an industrial perspective, and explores if organisations within the AEC industry view ICT as a strategic resource for their business practice. The second theme investigates the ‘perspective of academia’ in terms of future research directions of Construction Informatics. The results of the industrial study indicates that ICT is seen as a value-adding resource, but a shift towards the recognition of the importance of ICT in terms of value adding in winning work and achieving strategic competitive advantage is observed. On the other hand, ICT Training is found to be the theme of highest priority from the academia point of view

Patterns of Technological Innovation in the Use of e-Procurement in Construction

There is a consensus in the literature that the construction industry is slow in the uptake of electronic procurement when compared with manufacturing and other service industries. However, in the last two decades there is evidence of increasing use of web-based technologies in the execution of construction procurement activities. Despite this development and the expansive research output accompanying it, there is limited understanding of the nature of technological innovations in the use of web-based technologies in executing construction procurement activities. A systematic review of 102 research articles and seminal works from 72 sources published between 1978 and 2013 was used to identify patterns of technological innovation in the use of e-Procurement in execution of the six basic construction procurement activities identified in the International Standard on Construction Procurement (ISO 10845, 2010). Three dominant patterns of technological innovation, namely (i) the identification and adoption of web-based technologies and applications from other sectors (ii) improvement and use of already-known technologies in new areas; and (iii) the conjunction use of new and existing web-based technologies and applications in construction procurement were identified. These patterns of innovation were found to manifest most at the tendering and contract administration stages of construction procurement process; and are influenced by factors, including availability of the technologies, lessons from experience of users in other industries, nature of construction procurement activities, and the need to ensure efficiency in construction procurement process by procurers. The review indicates that although the need to integrate the six procurement activities, participants and different technologies appears to be the impetus for the different patterns of technological innovation in e-procurement use in construction, the inability to integrate the different web-based applications into a single system available to execute construction procurement activities constitutes a barrier to achieving this. Therefore, more attention is required in addressing this challeng

Identification of key process areas in the production on an e-capability maturity model for UK construction organisations

Uptake of e-procurement by construction organisations has been slow (Martin, 2008). Positive e-business achievements in other industries, point towards the potential for the construction industry to accomplish similar results. Since the Modernising Government White paper set targets through best value indicator BV157 for implementation in the public sector, Government has supported many initiatives encouraging e-procurement. These are based on documented efficiency and cost savings (Knudsen, 2003; Minahan and Degan, 2001; McIntosh and Sloan, 2001; Martin, 2008). However, Martin (2003, 2008) demonstrates only a modest increase in the uptake of e-procurement in the UK construction industry. Alshawi et al (2004) identified the significance of possessing a model to sustain the embedment of any business process within an organisation. Saleh and Alshawi (2005) describe a number of model types used to gauge maturity in an organisation. One of these models is the capability maturity model. Paulk et al (1993) released the Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in 1991. Since then many CMM’s have evolved. This paper reports on how a CMM based on Drivers and Barriers to e-procurement identified in Eadie et al (2009) can be developed to gauge the maturity of an organisation in relation to e-procurement. This paper presents details of a research project which used factor analysis to produce a set of Key Process Areas (KPA) from the drivers and barriers identified in Eadie et al (2009). These KPAs were then subjected to a mapping process linking them to maturity levels to develop a CMM to analyse the e-procurement capability of construction organisations. The mapping will be reported in a later paper. This termed as e-readiness of organisations will indicate the current state of a construction organisation in terms of its readiness to carry out e-procurement. The paper describes in detail the identification of the KPA’s

Requirements engineering for computer integrated environments in construction

A Computer Integrated Environment (CIE) is the type of innovative integrated information system that helps to reduce fragmentation and enables the stakeholders to collaborate together in business. Researchers have observed that the concept of CIE has been the subject of research for many years but the uptake of this technology has been very limited because of the development of the technology and its effective implementation. Although CIE is very much valued by both industrialists and academics, the answers to the question of how to develop and how to implement it are still not clear. The industrialists and researchers conveyed that networking, collaboration, information sharing and communication will become popular and critical issues in the future, which can be managed through CIE systems. In order for successful development of the technology, successful delivery, and effective implementation of user and industry-oriented CIE systems, requirements engineering seems a key parameter. Therefore, through experiences and lessons learnt in various case studies of CIE systems developments, this book explains the development of a requirements engineering framework specific to the CIE system. The requirements engineering process that has been developed in the research is targeted at computer integrated environments with a particular interest in the construction industry as the implementation field. The key features of the requirements engineering framework are the following: (1) ready-to-use, (2) simple, (3) domain specific, (4) adaptable and (5) systematic, (6) integrated with the legacy systems. The method has three key constructs: i) techniques for requirements development, which includes the requirement elicitation, requirements analysis/modelling and requirements validation, ii) requirements documentation and iii) facilitating the requirements management. It focuses on system development methodologies for the human driven ICT solutions that provide communication, collaboration, information sharing and exchange through computer integrated environments for professionals situated in discrete locations but working in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary environment. The overview for each chapter of the book is as follows; Chapter 1 provides an overview by setting the scene and presents the issues involved in requirements engineering and CIE (Computer Integrated Environments). Furthermore, it makes an introduction to the necessity for requirements engineering for CIE system development, experiences and lessons learnt cumulatively from CIE systems developments that the authors have been involved in, and the process of the development of an ideal requirements engineering framework for CIE systems development, based on the experiences and lessons learnt from the multi-case studies. Chapter 2 aims at building up contextual knowledge to acquire a deeper understanding of the topic area. This includes a detailed definition of the requirements engineering discipline and the importance and principles of requirements engineering and its process. In addition, state of the art techniques and approaches, including contextual design approach, the use case modelling, and the agile requirements engineering processes, are explained to provide contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering to the readers. After building contextual knowledge and understanding about requirements engineering in chapter 2, chapter 3 attempts to identify a scope and contextual knowledge and understanding about computer integrated environments and Building Information Modelling (BIM). In doing so, previous experiences of the authors about systems developments for computer integrated environments are explained in detail as the CIE/BIM case studies. In the light of contextual knowledge gained about requirements engineering in chapter 2, in order to realize the critical necessity of requirements engineering to combine technology, process and people issues in the right balance, chapter 4 will critically evaluate the requirements engineering activities of CIE systems developments that are explained in chapter 3. Furthermore, to support the necessity of requirements engineering for human centred CIE systems development, the findings from semi-structured interviews are shown in a concept map that is also explained in this chapter. In chapter 5, requirements engineering is investigated from different angles to pick up the key issues from discrete research studies and practice such as traceability through process and product modelling, goal-oriented requirements engineering, the essential and incidental complexities in requirements models, the measurability of quality requirements, the fundamentals of requirements engineering, identifying and involving the stakeholders, reconciling software requirements and system architectures and barriers to the industrial uptake of requirements engineering. In addition, a comprehensive research study measuring the success of requirements engineering processes through a set of evaluation criteria is introduced. Finally, the key issues and the criteria are comparatively analyzed and evaluated in order to match each other and confirm the validity of the criteria for the evaluation and assessment of the requirements engineering implementation in the CIE case study projects in chapter 7 and the key issues will be used in chapter 9 to support the CMM (Capability Maturity Model) for acceptance and wider implications of the requirements engineering framework to be proposed in chapter 8. Chapter 6 explains and particularly focuses on how the requirements engineering activities in the case study projects were handled by highlighting strengths and weaknesses. This will also include the experiences and lessons learnt from these system development practices. The findings from these developments will also be utilized to support the justification of the necessity of a requirements engineering framework for the CIE systems developments. In particular, the following are addressed. • common and shared understanding in requirements engineering efforts, • continuous improvement, • outputs of requirement engineering • reflections and the critical analysis of the requirements engineering approaches in these practices. The premise of chapter 7 is to evaluate and assess the requirements engineering approaches in the CIE case study developments from multiple viewpoints in order to find out the strengths and the weaknesses in these requirements engineering processes. This evaluation will be mainly based on the set of criteria developed by the researchers and developers in the requirements engineering community in order to measure the success rate of the requirements engineering techniques after their implementation in the various system development projects. This set of criteria has already been introduced in chapter 5. This critical assessment includes conducting a questionnaire based survey and descriptive statistical analysis. In chapter 8, the requirements engineering techniques tested in the CIE case study developments are composed and compiled into a requirements engineering process in the light of the strengths and the weaknesses identified in the previous chapter through benchmarking with a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) to ensure that it has the required level of maturity for implementation in the CIE systems developments. As a result of this chapter, a framework for a generic requirements engineering process for CIE systems development will be proposed. In chapter 9, the authors will discuss the acceptance and the wider implications of the proposed framework of requirements engineering process using the CMM from chapter 8 and the key issues from chapter 5. Chapter 10 is the concluding chapter and it summarizes the findings and brings the book to a close with recommendations for the implementation of the Proposed RE framework and also prescribes a guideline as a way forward for better implementation of requirements engineering for successful developments of the CIE systems in the future

A BIM-based value for money assessment in public-private partnership: an overall review

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have proliferated and adapted to public development in recent decades; within it, the value for money (VfM) assessment defines the feasibility of the project procurement model as one of the essential components of PPP. However, evaluating the VfM in PPPs remains problematic. Given concerns about PPP profitability, a more integrated VfM evaluation is urgently needed to manage multiple indicators along the project lifecycle. Building information management (BIM), popular in architecture, engineering, and construction, provides resources that could support the VfM to a great extent. This paper uses a review approach to identify the current issues that are affecting VfM assessments and suggests that BIM, functioning throughout the PPP lifecycle, could support decision-making in VfM processes in order to satisfy service targets

Strategic implications of e-business in the construction industry

Electronic Business (e-Business) is recognised as being able to help organisations in the construction industry to achieve competitiveness and substantial benefits. However, the uptake of e-business in the construction industry has been relatively limited and ineffective. Previous research covers the body of knowledge about how to identify the value of e-business once it has been created or how to identify the capabilities that can create value. There is no guidance available to help organisations to maximise their leverage by investing intelligently and matching the size of their demand for e-business solutions to the size of the market they plan to supply. This research aims to identify the strategic e-business needs and requirements of organisations in the construction industry; it helps them to scan or position their current situation, and provide a holistic approach to assist them in developing an executable e-business strategy. In order to achieve the aim and the formulated objectives, a multi-methodological research design and a pragmatic mixed-methods approach, involving a combination of both quantitative and qualitative datasets, were adopted to investigate the e-business practices of organisations in the industry. These include an exploratory investigation (an industry survey with 250 industry organisations), and an explanatory investigation (four case studies with specific industry end-user companies). The collected data was analysed and problems were identified; the elements for a holistic approach to manage e-business implementation emerged. Subsequently, a Strategic e-Business Framework was developed to provide a holistic approach for organisations in the construction industry to plan, execute and review their e-business strategies. The Framework enables organisations to consider the medium term (three to five years), long-term (over five to ten years), and emergent needs to derive business value. The key features of the Framework include six phases and phase gates, five functional factors, and 23 activities. The six phases include Analyse Situation, Establish Vision, Define Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Develop Action Plan, Implement Action Plan, and Review Strategy. The phases were defined to guide the IT leaders in carrying out consistent e-business planning. The outputs of each phase (phase gates) were defined to assist IT leaders in the review of procedures during their e-business implementation. The functional factors include management, people, process, technology and external environment. The factors were identified to address every facet of an organisation, and obtain collaboration efforts from both internal and external. They also ensure organisations have the opportunities to improve capabilities in these areas, and make them ready for immediate e-business implementation. Five groups of people or teams were assigned to the activities. The five groups were the Senior Management Board, IT Managers and their teams, Middle Level Management, Lower Level Management and other End-users, and external collaborators. The activities were categorised in order to provide a basis for organisations to utilise their resources, specifically human resource. Finally, a feedback loop was defined to enable the Framework to act as a cycle for going through repeatedly, which makes the continuous improvement of e-business implementation possible within organisations and provides a learning and feedback function that ensures lessons to be learned from past e-business implementation. The evaluation of the Framework was conducted via six structured interviews with industry practitioners. The findings indicated that the industry practitioners welcomed the Framework and considered it as a positive step towards e-business management

Evaluations of BIM: Frameworks and perspectives

© ASCE 2014. This paper examines the evaluation of BIM-enabled projects. It provides a critical review of the three main areas of measurement, namely: technology, organization/people and process. Using two documented case studies of BIM implementation, the paper illustrates the benefits realized by project owners and contractors, and illustrates a lack of attention relative to contextual factors affecting the adoption and deployment of BIM. The paper has three main contributions. First, it identifies and discusses the lack of and difficulty surrounding standardized assessment methods for evaluating BIM-enabled projects. Second, it proposes a conceptual model that includes contextual attributes and demonstrates how the proposed framework reaches beyond simple evaluation to encompass the documentation of BIM's benefits, lessons learned, challenges and adopted solutions. Third, it shows how the framework can account for existing business processes, organizational process assets, and enterprise level factors. The paper aims to provide a conceptual basis for evaluation and a starting point for benchmarking

The impact of procurement method on costs of procurement

Collaborative working methods offer the hope of reduced waste, lower tendering costs and improved outputs. The costs of tendering may be influenced by the introduction of different working methods. Transaction cost economics appears to offer an analytical framework for studying the costs of tendering, but it is more to do with providing explanations at the institutional/industry level, not at the level of individual projects. Surveys and interviews were carried out with small samples in UK. The data show that that while tendering costs are not necessarily higher in collaborative working arrangements, there is no correlation between costs of tendering and the way the work is organized. Practitioners perceive that the benefits of working in collaborative procurement routes far outweigh the costs. Tendering practices can be improved to avoid waste, and the suggested improvements include restricting selective tendering lists to 23 bidders, letting bidders know who they are competing with, reimbursing tendering costs for aborted projects and ensuring that timely and comprehensive information is provided to bidders