Information Management within the Construction Industry (Essay Sample)

Information Management within the Construction Industry
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Information Management within the Construction Industry
The amount of information generated in our society has grown exponentially in the latter part of the twentieth century. Information is bombarding us at an ever-increasing rate enabled by email, voice mail, cell phones, pagers, laptop computers and personal digital assistants. This dramtic increase in information flow is illustrated by the the way information can be accesed anywhere and at anytime.
It is within this context that the project manager manages today’s projects. There are at least two important ramifications of this situation for the project manager and those in the project office as they attempt to manage and communicate project related information. First, people want to receive the specific information that they need in a timely manner. The other challenge for the project manager is to communicate project related information effectively within the project stakeholders that is on the vesrge of information overload (Knutson, 2001, pg. 179).
Introduction
The construction industry offers an exciting and dynamic environment in which to work. The stream of unique projects, the on-site working environment and the ingenuity and innovation required to solve one-off problems demands a creative approach to work, which is seldom found elsewhere. To which can be added the satisfaction of making tangible changes to the micro-environment which the building or structure occupies.
The ability to understand and locate needed information is critical to any business. For a construction firm, information management is the classification and structuring of information for storage and retrieval as it flows through the phases of work and later through the construction life cycle. Information management can best be described in the larger context of knowledge management, which is about creating, disseminating and using information in creative ways to solve problems. Both information management and knowledge management embody more than computer technology which is simply a tool to support them (Demkin, et al., 2008, pg. 428). Vital to successful information management within the construction project are project delivery expertise and management skills (Demkin, et al., 2008, pg. 429).
Building information in a construction project is in a constant state of evolution. Product information becomes construction information, which becomes procurement information, which becomes construction information. The information used mostly in the construction industry can widely be categorized into business functions, industry resources, and project materials information. Information related to the business function includes accounting records, legal records, marketing information and management information.
While other industries have been able to achieve very significant improvements in productivity and quality over the last few decades, the construction industry seems to have been at a standstill. The industry has not been able to combine high quality with productivity, customer satisfaction and flexibility. Competition remains mainly focused on lowest cost and offering capacity instead of quality, sustainability and customer-perceived value. The construction industry is, in particular lagging far behind other industries in using modern technology as a major catalyst for improving its processes.
Winch, (2010, pgs. 3-4) states that the problem of managing construction projects is principally a problem in the management of information and its progressive embodiment in a physical asset. The information management methods used in current construction processes are inadequate. In particular, the traditional separation of design and production causes problems in the form of duplication of work, inconsistent documentation, etc. According to a study carried out in the UK (Latham 1994; Vanier, et al., 1999, pg. 2845), 30 percent of the total building costs could be saved when information problems such as repeated work, overlapping work, false information, redoing, etc., are solved. Improved data exchange and the overall managing of the information will be a key solution to this.
Early developments in construction computing provided support for activities where information was created. Good examples are the use of CAD systems for drawing production and spreadsheets for cost calculations. During the last few years new emerging IT technologies have increasingly been used to facilitate information management and transfer in the construction process. Computer networking, document management systems, the internet, database technology and interoperability standards provide examples of such technologies. The potential of these for data sharing has however not been fully utilized in the construction industry, but has rather been used for exchanging traditional documents in a digital format. Over the past several years, the dramatic progress of information technology has contributed distribution of innovative systems to most of the industries in the world. Such technologies offer strategic advantages to gain competitive advantage, improving productivity and performance, developing new ways of managing and organizing.
This paper will explore and evaluate the influence and effect of information management in the construction industry. It will exhibit what strategic benefits can be obtained by implementing sound information management systems within an organization and the construction industry as a whole. Additionally, it will examine the information management strategy as a part of advantages of technology as well as some of the challenges faced while implementing information management technologies.
Definition of Terms
Information management is a complete term that incorporates all the systems and procedures within an organization for the making of and use of corporate information. It entails systems such as web content management, digital asset management, document management, learning management systems and records management. Other systems included within this scope are learning content management systems, enterprise search as well as collaborations. However, information management is more than just information technology, equally important are the business processes and practices that are underlying in the creation and use of information. Therefore it encompasses people, processes, technology and content (Carrillo, et al., 2005).
There are several different perspectives of what makes up information management. The literature provides several definitions that differ substantially depending on the perspective of the authors. Synott and Gruber (1998; Johns, 2002, pg. 3) identify the information management system function with control and management over information resources. According to Kremar (2004, pg. 49), information management is the overall managerial functions as well as the organization of information, organization of information systems and the organization of information and communication technology whose objective is to ensure, with regards to business objectives, the best possible use of the resource information. However, a more practical definition of information management is, the application of management techniques to gather information, convey it within and without the organization and administer it to enable administrators to make quicker and more efficient decisions. Information managing has meant deploying of fresh technology s resolutions, such as substance or document supervision techniques, statistics warehousing or portal uses.
Literature Review
Over the past decade, the dramatic progress of information systems has contributed distribution of information management systems to a majority of the world’s industries. New technologies have been developed for networking, information sharing and database systems. While most of these new developments have rapidly taken place in manufacturing and retail industries, the overall construction industry has been adopting new technologies at a relatively slower pace.
There have been studies and researches conducted in this field. Gaith, et al., (2009, pg. 412-421) conducted a research on the impact of management information in the construction industry in malaysia and found out that information technology use has had a positive impact on construction firms perfomance. Mui et al.,(2002, pg. 259), surveyed internet use in the malysian construction industry and found that most of companies that used the internet considered it a useful tool. Rivard et al., (2004), identified two major roles that information plays in any construction project, these he identified as,the specification of the resulting product (design information) and the innitiation and cntrol of the activities required for constructing the faciltiy (management information). According to Mohammed et al. (2003), in the majority of the construction process, information is predominantly based on old-fashioned methods of interaction, for example, one on one meetings and the exchange of paper documents in the form of technical drawings and site construction. That is why the construction industry has for several years suffereed from difficult-to-access, out-of-date and incomplete information (Shoesmith, 1995)
A core issue in the drive for increased productivity in the construction industry is the operational managing of information, in the dual ways of participants plus in the way of information accumulated, coded and stored in firm database structures CITATION Moh03 \l 1033 (Mohamed, et al., 2003). Other research survey which have been carried out in the field of information management and construction industry include such as Australia [ Love (1996), Marosszeky (2000),Thomas (2001)]...