Planning and estimating in practice and the use of integrated computer models

Research into IT applications in the construction industry has been going on for many years, most of this work took the form of system development aimed at assisting construction practitioners and aimed at improving processes in order to reduce the cost of building. Most of these developments tended to identify a problem in a sector of the industry and focused on using a certain technology in IT to provide a solution. This was often done without a proper investigation into the suitability and the acceptability of the technology to the end users (construction practitioners). Furthermore, most of the work was too focused on solving problems in isolation and did not consider the overall organisational framework and structure of the industry. This paper discusses and presents the results of a survey conducted to investigate the planning and estimating work practices in the industry in order to establish the important issues for the development of an integrated planning and estimating computer model. The survey established the important issues for the acceptability of computer models, the technical aspect to be addressed and a better working practice for estimating and planning. The technical aspect on which the computer model was based is the optimisation of the time and cost of building and the best work practice used is the integration of estimating and planning.