A Model for Construction Project Management Extranets

Nuria Forcada; Miquel Casals; Xavier Roca

Abstract:

In AEC each participant of a construction project (designer, the constructor, etc) takes part in many other projects and each of these groups of participants are probably working in collaborative spaces. What happens then, when for instance the designer must hold as many collaborative spaces as projects he carries on? In the construction sector, each project is unique and the group of people, who are working on it, is different. Among the drawbacks of several of these applications is the lack of support provided to users. In this Paper a draft of guidelines for the users of extranets for the management of construction projects will be exposed. The aim of this project is to establish the necessary basis and criteria to facilitate an integral project management and to help SMEs using Information and Communication Technologies so as to reduce the fear to this new tool from such a traditional and fragmented sector.

To do so, we have developed a new working and organizational standard model for the information and communication system for the company. The scope of this project is that all the companies (specially SMEs of the construction sector) were capable to identify their necessities, define their process improvement strategies (using ICT) and learn in a reliable way the benefits of using this new technology. In contrary, in an early future this technologies will become an absolutely critic barrier for this companies to participate in many projects. This model will serve as a demonstration for all the participants of a construction project (architect, constructor, client, suppliers, etc.) that all the information functions (consult and storage), communication, data transmission, etc. related to an specific project can be done by using new technologies (like extranets or collaboration tools) and with more advantages than the traditional working methods.