Research On Electronic Commerce Framework For Construction Industry

Construction industry is a complicated process including various participators, so it is important to exchange information in time among the stakeholders. But currently, information flow in construction industry is mostly manual, and numerous paper copies of documents and drawings are dominant in practice, which reduces the productivity seriously. At present, the swift development of electronic commerce (EC) provides a valuable opportunity to the information system of construction industry definitely. It may provide high efficiency service for material purchase and cost controlling and lead to considerable saving in terms of time and money for construction projects. But the uptake of EC in the construction industry has been relatively limited and ineffective as compared to other engineering sectors such as the automotive or the aerospace industry. One of the reasons for this is that the application of electronic commerce of various participants is independent and couldn't form a coincident system, because of the fragment nature of the construction industry and the one-off nature of the product. Hence, to build an effective electronic commerce framework is important to heighten efficiency, reduce cost, improve competition and ensure persistent development for construction industry. Basing on analyses and study on EC theory and specialties of construction industry, this paper puts forward the framework and action scheme of Chinese construction industry EC. Key studies are as follows:Firstly, this paper puts forward the conception of construction industry EC, analyzes the influence of EC and gives the appliance characters of construction industry EC differing from the general EC. Secondly, this paper proposes three principles of EC for construction industry, builds up and discusses the integrated EC framework that includes the technology system, the application system and information integration among different systems. Finally, it sets up the general implement scheme of Chinese construction industry EC, analyze on the appliance of each step and bring forward the keys of successful completion.