information and communication technology for collaborative working ...

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY FOR COLLABORATIVE WORKING IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT Onuegbu O. Ugwu1 1

Centre for Infrastructure & Construction Industry Development, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, [email protected]

The application of information and communication technology (ICT) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector has evolved over several years. However, although organisations invest in ICT in their bid to harness technology and streamline business processes for improved project management, they continue to experience problems that militate against successful implementation of ICT projects. This results from cultural, organisational and other operational constraints. This paper discusses the trends in IT application for collaborative project management and the IT governance issues that underpin successful implementation of IT projects.

INTRODUCTION - COLLABOARTIVE WORKING IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT Supply chain management has witnessed tremendous shifts over the recent decades. The construction supply chain operation has advanced from two-person contractual relationship management and interaction models to multi-layer inter-organizational contractual relationships, business transactions and interactions in product design, manufacture and supply. This evolution has resulted in a shift from a single focus on production efficiency to enlarged customer-driven collaborative working and partnership synchronization approaches in order to ensure efficient project delivery. This has also culminated in customer relationship management (CRM) aspirations that now form an integral part of organizations total quality management (TQM) objectives/goals in project delivery. There is increasing recognition of the need to address various problem areas in construction processes such as quality control, extra costs due to material wastages, and reduced speed of construction. The terms collaboration and collaborative working are now widely used to explain the key requirements in addressing the above problems as organisations do business in the interconnected local, regional, and global operating business environments. The rapid advancements in ICT such as the convergence between voice and data communications offer solutions for improved collaborative working in various sectors. Consequently, construction organisations continue to invest in ICT projects for business process improvements. However, cultural, organisational and other operational constraints have made efforts to fully harness technology for improved business process improvements more difficult. This paper discusses the environment for ICT-enabled collaborative working in project management, the evolving ICTdriven solutions for business process improvement in the construction supply chain, and the governance issues involved in successful project management using sate-ofthe-art technologies. It concludes by proffering recommendations for greater ICT applications in architecture, engineering ad construction (AEC) sector.

Onuegbu Ugwu

EVOLUTION OF ICT FOR COLLABORATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT There has been a proliferation of applications designed to solve different AEC problems. These include design analysis and calculation/detailing systems like CAD (computer-aided design) software; planning tools (e.g. Microsoft Project & Primavera) , costing, building services design; optimisation tools, database-driven applications, documents management systems, manufacturing enterprise systems, management information systems (MIS) that provide various kinds of decision support depending on end-users requirements, communications systems such as Email, and WWW. The focus now is on enterprise integration to streamline business processes using available technology. In addition organisations in the supply chain are integrating vertically and/or horizontally, sometime through mergers, takeovers, acquisitions and Joint Ventures (JVs). These create project management environments that necessitate the integration of different core business functions such as; design, planning, estimating, construction, maintenance, marketing, and human resources management processes. The increasing demand is to easily access and/or share distributed applications supporting various processes, project information, documents and knowledge as and when needed. Thus different applications such as human resource administration, purchasing/order processing, design, planning, estimating and site systems need to be integrated together within the same organisation (intra-organisation) and/or between different organisations (inter-organisation). The ensuing sections discuss the business case for ICT in the AEC sector, the evolving applications and the supporting technologies, frameworks and architectures.

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR ICT-ENABLED PROJECT MANAGEMENT Construction organisations need to fully tap the knowledge of their workforces and partners in the supply chain in order to remain competitive in the business environment. However, the ability to share ideas and problem solving knowledge decreases as the parties involved are separated by geographical and organisational boundaries. ICT-based collaboration enables design office, construction site staff, and other stakeholders to work together as a team towards the common goal of successful project delivery. ICT tools for project management collaboration give the best value for money (measured by improved efficiency in the organisation) when information is shared between and across functional lines (e.g. planning, design, estimating, construction etc) in either structured or unstructured (informal), manner. The by-products of collaboration include innovation, which results from people working together and exchanging ideas. Some of the technical capabilities that facilitate collaborative project management include; discussion forums, task scheduling and management, online-meetings and presentations. Other ICT tools for distributed collaboration include video-conferencing. Fong S. K. K, (2003) discussed the concrete benefits of web-based project collaboration in a case study project in Hong Kong. These include: (i) Real-time and borderless communication, (ii) Multi-parties real-time collaboration, (iii) Concise and Proceedings of the One day Seminar on “Recent Developments in Project Management in Hong Kong (12 May 2006)

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reliable records, (iv) Enhanced accountability and promotion of sense of urgency, (v) Increased efficiency and productivity

ICT APPLICATION AREAS FOR COLLABORATIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT & FUTURE DIRECTIONS The application areas include: (i) Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), (ii) Business Process Engineering (BPR), and (ii) Business Process Re-Engineering: EAI solutions take out the time required for different applications to interact so as to improve efficiency, while BPR applications look at and identify what are the core businesses of an organisation. This enables the processes to be taken out and streamlined as part of improved business operations. Finally business process reengineering applications require re-designing the existing processes in an organisation in order to get maximum benefit from deploying technology. Such benefits include: increased efficiency and reduction in the amount of head count and time required to assess and use the separate applications. However, such individual applications are often designed without giving attention to the need for them to interact with each other and exchange data between each other for task automation. This is known as interoperability problem in literature. The ensuing section discusses various application areas. Application Areas: E-Business/Commerce: This business methodology addresses the needs of organisations, merchants and consumers to cut costs while improving the quality of goods and services and increasing the speed of service delivery. It can be viewed from multiple dimensions including communications, business process. From a communications perspective, electronic commerce is the electronic delivery of services and information. From a business process perspective, it is the automation of business transactions and workflows. Electronic commerce can be broadly divided into several main categories. Two of these are: (i) Business-to-Business (B2B), and (ii) Business-to-Consumer (B2C). However, the uptake of electronic commerce in the construction industry has been relatively limited and ineffective when compared to other engineering sectors such as the automotive or the aerospace industry. The reasons are as follows: o a construction project is a complex activity involving several participants. These include the client, architect, structural engineer, fabricator, main contractor, and other sub contractors including suppliers. o there is a lack of clear audit trail. This causes delays in communicating with other members of a project team. There is also the problem of non-repudiation (e.g. acknowledgement of receipt of email messages without denials) The main E-Commerce applications areas and key enablers include; (i) Company /product promotions; (ii) E-procurement through search engines and Web directories; and (iii) Project management/online project collaboration. Finally future E-Commerce trends include: M-commerce: Technology has now matured and makes it is possible to connect mobile devices such as mobile phones and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). Thus current researches are investigating the opportunities in mobile electronic commerce or m-commerce in infrastructure delivery and mega project management.

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Proceedings of the One day Seminar on “Recent Developments in Project Management in Hong Kong (12 May 2006)

Onuegbu Ugwu

Document Management (DM): This system facilitates efficient handling of large amounts of documents that originate from different sources, and are often in various formats. Most corporate knowledge is often stored in the form of organizational guidelines, procedures, manuals etc (i.e. explicit knowledge). The main challenges in this segment relate to; (i) organizing the documents, (ii) searching and finding (retrieving) these documents, (iii) managing version control (document revisions and updates), (iv) managing data about these documents (i.e. metadata), and (v) managing user access rights and privileges. Electronic document management systems (EDMS) have attained good level of use in infrastructure projects management in Hong Kong, Web Content Management (WCM): The tools for WCM are similar in function to DM systems. However, they deal specifically with web documents and the processes of publishing these documents over the web. The main issues here include; managing hyperlinked documents, controlling their display and different access devices such as PC’s, and wireless devices such as personal digital assistants (PDA). Enterprise Information Portals (EIP): These constitute the main user-interface to knowledge management systems. The advantage is that they offer personalized and personalisable user interfaces, and the ability to consolidate scattered information from various sources (internal and external) on one screen. This gives knowledge workers a “one-stop-shop” (i.e. single point of access) to all the information and resources that are relevant in performing their duties. Information Retrieval (IR): Although this traditionally refers to search engines, advances in ICT and computing techniques has expanded information retrieval horizon. This now includes information discovery using state-of-the-art techniques such as search agents, user profiling, automatic document classification, and information visualization (e.g. using advanced virtual reality simulations). Workflow Systems: These are used to capture the knowledge contained in business processes. In practical terms the development of every robust software system, begins with capturing the workflows that define business processes that need improvement (e.g. through ICT-driven) process automation. For instance one of the end-user requirements and system specification for an EDMS would include a textual description of workflow for handling incoming documents in a construction site. The software development team would then generate a flow chart that captures the textual description, map these into system component before writing the codes for task/process automation at the software code-level. Driving Technologies & Architectures: WWW & Web Portals: This is the major trend in collaborative working. It is now part of daily lives, especially in developed economies that can provide the supporting infrastructure (including telecommunications) in a critical mass. Peer-to-Peer Computing: “Peer-to-peer is a communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session …In some cases, peer-to-peer communications is implemented by giving each communication node both server and client capabilities. In recent usage, peer-to-peer has come to describe applications in which users can use the Internet to exchange files with each other directly or through a mediating server”. One potential advantage of P2P is that it could be used by corporations to enable their employees to share files through the internet network, without the expense involved in maintaining a centralized server. This means that employees (or more specifically Proceedings of the One day Seminar on “Recent Developments in Project Management in Hong Kong (12 May 2006)

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their machines) are able to exchange business information with each other directly (hence on a peer-to-peer basis). The technology has potential huge application in integrating seamlessly the construction supply chain, starting from product order receipt and configuration to manufacture and delivery. This has huge potential application in integrating small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the AEC sector and streamline their business processes and interactions in the project management space. Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) & Web services: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) takes WWW and EAI solutions for collaborative working to the next level. At the basic level, it involves mapping business processes to objects that are wrapped in software systems and are not visible to users. The objects are dedicated to solving specific business process problems e.g. retrieve document, uploaded document, send message, searching for information, etc. These functions are called services because they enable each application to call up each others services. The applications’ services are made available through the web interface. Thus the services are broadcast on WWW as Web-services so that any application can call up the services as long as the applications all adhere to defined protocols for service request and delivery. Example applications areas include sustainability appraisal and knowledge management, and infrastructure security vulnerability assessment in construction (Ugwu 2005). SOA applications rely on XML (eXtensible Mark-up Language) to address the interoperability problem. Wireless communications (Bluetooth): Bluetooth is a form of wireless technology that removes the need for cables connecting computer equipment. This should enable remote connectivity and distributed collaborative working Agent-based procurement of goods and services: Agent and Multi-Agent systems have been deployed in collaborative working to automate some tasks. In this situation, artificial agents representing their owners execute delegated functions on their owner’s behalf. Several application areas in construction include: collaborative working, negotiation. Other agent application areas include claims management, eprocurement, information searching and retrieval, supply chain coordination, and standards processing. Procurement is now possible through intelligent autonomous software agents. This marks a fundamental paradigm shift from software-as-tool to software-as-assistant (Anumba et al., 2005). Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): RFID technology has great potential to support and facilitate the production and distribution of construction products, including precast components. These would contribute overcome several supply chain problems. It would also empower more collaboration in supply chain management, and improve project delivery on time, quality, and within budget resulting in a more satisfied client. However, the implementation of RFID requires some strategic shifts in business operations. Implementing the resulting strategic shifts requires an understanding of the business processes, information logistics and the high-level collaboration that is necessary between construction supply chain partners in product specification, manufacture, delivery and installation at construction sites. It is also necessary to analyse and understand current problems including associated transactions (i.e. production, supply, and installation) costs, in order to justify the infrastructure investment required in deploying RFID solutions for technology-driven business process improvement. There is a tendency to assume that RFID technology alone offers or could offer solutions to all supply chain integration and coordination problems including 7.5


Onuegbu Ugwu

construction. This paper suggests that the application of RFID will be optimised if it is complemented by other existing and emerging technologies such as the Internet, intelligent agents, and multi-agent systems (MAS). Thus the evolving field of RFID applications in construction and supply chains in general would be further enhanced by using RFID and hybrid of multi-agent system (MAS)-based architectural solution. This would address current limitations of RFID application in supply chain integration and information coordination to boost efficiency and productivity. It would also minimise the problems of information overload that now characterise existing internet-based solutions for data and information exchange (Ugwu et-al 2006, in press).

CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS This paper has discussed ICT applications in construction. It outlined the business cases for IT in construction and discussed current and emerging applications in the sector. Some of the demonstrable concrete benefits include: real-time communication, multi-parties real-time collaboration, concise and reliable records, enhanced accountability, and increased efficiency and productivity. The present and evolving application areas include; E-business, cross-functional enterprise integration, document and web-content management, workflow synchronisation, information retrieval, knowledge management, disaster management, sustainable design and construction, and infrastructure security. The underpinning technologies and architectures include; email systems, world-wide web, web-based and enterprise information portals, peer-to-peer computing, wireless technologies including agentand multi-agent technology, remote frequency identification devices (RFID), service oriented architectures and eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML)

REFERENCES Anumba C. J, Ugwu O. O & Ren Z (Eds.), (2005) Agents and Multi-Agent Systems in Construction, SPON Press. London & New York Fong S. K. K (2003) The Role of Developer in Sustainable Construction, Presentation at the HKU Built Environment Symposia 2003/2004 – Built Environment Sustainability Ugwu O. O (2005) A Service-Oriented Framework for Sustainability Appraisal & Knowledge Management, International Journal of IT- Construction ITCon (Electronic Journal) 10, 245-263 Ugwu O. O & Kumaraswamy, Ng T.S.T & Chow N. Y (2006) Using Radio Frequency Identification to Support Precast Concrete Production Logistics in Construction: Potentials, Challenges, and Agent-Based Architecture, Journal of Advanced Informatics, Special Issue on RFID in Construction (accepted).


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