INNOVATIVE USE OF CONSTRUCTION PROJECT EXTRANETS TO FACILITATE PROJECT COLLABORATION AND MANAGEMENT

In today’s world people can work independently for a shared purpose across space, time, and organizational boundaries with the help of Information Technology (IT). Working with a wide diversity of knowledge and skills from all over the world brings a broad range of viewpoints and expertise to the construction projects. With the assistance of “Construction Project Extranets” (CPEs), construction project teams become more flexible, adaptive and competitive by improving their performance and get more efficient. In addition, the project time cycle can be reduced, as the information flow became faster and continuous communication is established with accurate data. This technology is an innovative approach to collaboration and project management and it is being used by the industry more commonly an increasing speed in the past few years. However, despite all the benefits and opportunities that CPEs provide, the adoption rates are still not very sufficient. To understand CPE implementation and operation issues, three construction projects, which utilized CPE technology as a sole source for management, were studied. The paper provides an updated overview of current implementation practices, factors associated with successful adoption, the opportunities these tools promise to the project stakeholders, latest innovative approaches/uses and last but not least; the improvement areas