By Mazianah Rahmat (2009102879)
IT is dedicated to capturing, manipulating, storing, communicating, retrieving and presenting information represented in digital form on behalf of people of whom we call users. While construction industry is a unique industry that involved many stakeholders, process and cost to produce a product (building). When we talk about IT, people may think about the application of the computer to store all the data needed instead of using the traditional way by keeping all the data on the paper and keep it in the file. That is what the industry are lagged off. The person involved in construction industry seems to ignore the IT presence in their practice. They prefer to choose the traditional way to do all the filing, pricing, keeping all the records of communication and others. Their knowledge in using the IT in their practice seems to be little and they felt it is easy for them to use the traditional way instead of using the IT application. Sometimes, they feel that it is wasting their time and money to learn on something that they feel will not benefit them but just giving them problems.
The benefit that can be gain from the application of information technology (IT) as Ahmad et.al (2007) stated that IT can effectively promote integration in the construction industry. Recent advances in the field of IT, the increasingly global nature of the construction market and a renewed demand for quality and productivity in construction are making the issue of integration more critical than ever. Design and construction organizations can achieve integration of various construction activities by redesigning many of their organizational functions and processes and IT can facilitate redesigning of these processes. The dynamic nature of construction processes, interdependence of various participating entities and the need for teamwork, flexibility and a high degree of coordination suggest that IT has great potential in the construction industry. The construction industry can make effective use of communication, data accessibility and common systems designed to process data, the three major categories of IT capabilities to achieve integration.
Appropriate IT investment and management's commitment and ability to provide leadership under the changed atmosphere are crucial for the successful implementation of IT in the construction industry. The impact of IT on the design and construction organizations must be managed with an understanding of external and internal factors that affect business organizations. It is essential that an appropriate environment that establishes suitable reward recognition procedures, encourages team-work and creativity and stimulates decentralization of decision-making activities be created. Thus, IT implementation is not just a technical enhancement but a managerial decision that involves re-engineering of organizational functions and operations.
An article by Jaafar et.al (2007) stated that the Malaysian government has been pushing everyone – businesses, public agencies and even individuals – to adopt IT as part of a larger objective to achieve the developed country status by the year 2020. The Ministry of Finance for example introduced the electronic Procurement System (eP) intended for all its suppliers. The Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) implemented the E-Construction Portal and is currently working on E-tendering.
Arslan et al. (2005) regard E-bidding as necessary for the US contracting firms in order to increase their market share and chance of surviving in the construction industry’s competitive business environment. In order to complete a project with the highest profit, they see IT as important in linking the main contractor with their sub contractors. Main contractors can adopt the same procedure adopted by their client in dealing with their sub-contractors. However, various assessment studies found that the application of IT in the construction industry was not very encouraging. In Malaysia, while a study by Lim et al. (2002) found that the participating contractors had access to the Internet which was comparable to developed countries such as the United States.
Various explanations have been given for the relatively low application of IT by the construction industry in comparison to others. Li et al. (2000) pointed to two critical factors on why the industry cannot attain benefits from IT, firstly, organisation hierarchical structures which are ineffective and inefficient and do not support IT implementation, and secondly, IT have been implemented in an ad hoc manner. Most IT application is brought into the industry without planning and evaluation. As such most of the impact has been allowed to just happen. It is not surprising that the full potential of IT to the organizational performance is seldom reached.
According to Steward and Mohamed (2003), fragmentation is one of the barriers to the strategic use of IT. Similarly Arslan et al. (2005) saw the multi-disciplinary, multi-national and multi-billion economies involving many actors working concurrently at different locations and using heterogeneous technologies as a barrier to adapt technology. Construction project teams with their own unique entities, created through a complex integration of factors, with interdisciplinary players, varying roles, responsibilities, goals and objectives have been noted by Goodman and Chinowsky (1996). Information produced by many sources, at many levels of abstraction and detail, also contributes to industry fragmentation
A number of integration approaches and strategies for examples concurrent engineering, lean production, design and construct and many others which have been successfully applied in other industries have been put forward, but according to Mokhtar and Bedard (1995), these approaches have been proven to be inadequate to cope with the increasing complexity of construction projects, without the support of IT. This is because most of these approaches try to focus on elements linked to time, quality and cost but researcher has found that 85% of commonly associated problems are process related, and not product related. Hence, IT should be considered as a very important tool to enhance the industry performance.
References
Arslan G, Tuncan M, Birgonul MT, Dikmen I. E-Bidding proposal preparation system for construction projects. Build Environ 2005. Available from: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/buildenv.
Lim YM, Abdul Aziz AR, Ni AC, Yee WC, Lay WS. A survey of internet usage in the Malaysian construction industry. ITcon 2002;7:259–69.
Steward RA, Mohamed S. Integrated information resources: impediments and coping strategies in construction. The Australian Centre for Construction Innovation, University of New South Wales 2003. In: Karim K, Marosszeky M, editors. Current and future use of IT in the architectural sector. Proceedings of the joint international symposium of CIB working commissions. Singapore: National University of Singapore; 2003. p. 448–59.
Mokhtar A, Bedard C. Towards integrated construction technical documents – a new approach through product modelling. In: Proceedings of the 1st European conference on product and process
modelling in the building industry, Dresden; 1995. p. 3–9.
Mastura Jaafar,M , Abdul Rashid Abdul Aziz , T. Ramayah , Basri Saad In: Integrating information technology in the construction industry: Technology readiness assessment of Malaysian contractors
School of Housing Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia 2007
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