Opportunities for IT to Support the Construction Supply Chain

The fragmented nature of the construction industry presents special challenges for the application of information technologies (IT) to the construction supply chain. With few exceptions to-date, information technologies have not made a significant impact on construction practice. Despite limited successes, there have been increasing calls by industry for application of supply chain thinking to construction. The FIATECH initiative, in particular, has defined a project for an “integrated and automated procurement and supply network” with a mid-term vision for implementation. The authors’ experience with applying IT solutions to the construction supply chain suggests that much of the FIATECH vision is achievable with development and deployment of current technologies. However, in reference to current fragmentation of the industry, the authors’ argue that supply chain information technologies must be deployed in coherent, staged implementations that provide integrated solutions to supply management problems. In this paper, we review lessons learned from supply chain IT implementations in manufacturing and construction. This review is used to develop recommendations for supply chain capabilities in construction and related sets of information technologies to support implementation efforts.