E-readiness in construction: readiness of UK construction organisations

n today's economic climate, competitive advantage can be achieved by focusing on issues such as providing high quality services and products with minimal cost, having the flexibility to predict and respond to market needs, or through the efficient management of resources. With unprecedented levels of technological change now increasingly being used as a means through which competitive advantage can be leveraged. However, investments in IT-based business systems have not realised their full potential, and the worldwide cost of IT failure could account to US$6.2 trillion per year; and failure stories were reported by Alshawi, Burns, Business Wire and Krigsman. The unavailability of a suitable measurement, assessment or benchmark to measure and identify the organisation's readiness to adopt IT for the construction industry does not help. This research takes the position of e-readiness 'as a measure of the degree to which an organisation may be ready, prepared or willing to obtain benefits which arise from the digital economy'. To shape the framework, literature reviews and a scoping study questionnaire were used in this research investigation for the discovery and building of this framework. This led to the discovery of key indicators (KI) as identified by industry experts. Three case studies were put in place for data collection and the development of the framework - resulting to the discovery of five KIs and twentyfive sub-key factors (SKI). To help organisations to implement the framework, a scoring system and sample cases were proposed in the Final Framework - which was validated by academic and industry experts. The resulting ERiC framework provides an original solution to assessing the e-readiness of organisations to adopt IT. The ERiC framework entails leadership and empowerment, business and information process, IT sharability/interoperability, change management, and policy/strategy/vision as the KI. The leadership and Empowerment KI describes the IT vision, involvement, inspiration, integrity and improvement as its SKIs; while the business and information process KI lists standardisation, automation, availability, integration and interchange as SKIs. Uptake, standards, availability, skills and legal framework are SKIs for the IT sharability/interoperability KI; while the change management KI consist of strategic framework, implementation, executive sponsorship, business practices and communication as SKIs. The policy/strategy/vision KI has collaboration, identification, dissemination, empowerment and future technologies as SKIs. In the attempt to assist organisation to be e-ready, each SKI is redefined into a 5-level maturity-styled statements and sample cases. Each case is related to construction and IT applications. The proposed scoring system has the flexibility to implement weightings to selected KIs - this will enable users the ability to prioritise factors as required by the organisation. The framework will provide an overall e-readiness score of the organisation and identify gaps in the key indicators and sub-key indicators.