Lee, S H; Thomas, S R and Tucker, R L (2005) Web-based benchmarking system for the construction industry. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 131(7), pp. 790-798. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
The construction industry has been slow to adopt competitive benchmarking as a tool for continuous improvement. The nature of the industry, its projects, participants, and methods of execution differ widely from the manufacturing sectors making traditional benchmarking models developed for manufacturing difficult to adapt. This paper presents a benchmarking system developed by the Construction Industry Institute (CII) for broad application in the construction industry. During the past couple of years, the CII Benchmarking and Metrics (BM&M) system has been ported to a web-based system of data collection, performance and practice use reporting, and industry analysis. CII serves as a third-party facilitator and data clearinghouse to permit the sharing of highly confidential project data in a competitive environment. Cost, schedule, safety, practice use, and productivity data are now collected on-line during project execution 24/7 from the most remote project sites. Confidential reports are returned online showing metric scores, performance quartiles, and graphical comparisons of individual project performance to a database of similar projects. This paper addresses many of the issues that have served as barriers to benchmarking for the construction industry and provides an overview of how CII is confronting these issues. A background and a descriptive discussion of the database is provided and a few key findings from the data analyses are presented.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | benchmarks; construction costs; internet; performance characteristics; productivity; project management |
| Index terms: | project management, construction industry, internet, project performance, database, facilitator, Construction Industry Institute, industry analysis, continuous improvement, productivity, construction cost, benchmarking, web-based system, project data, data analysis |
| Subjects: | data collection methods, strategic management, research organizations, computing systems, practitioner, digital technology, financial and cost management, data analysis and analytics, management, performance measurement, project management theory and practice, data management, industry analysis |
| Topics: | Quality Management, Digital Applications, Project Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Roles and Professions |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here