Project web sites with design management extensions

Augenbroe, G; Verheij, H and Schwarzm Ller, G (2002) Project web sites with design management extensions. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 9(3), pp. 259-271. ISSN 0969-9988

Abstract

Web hosted project spaces offer dedicated collaboration and information sharing functions to dispersed members of design, engineering and manufacturing teams. During the recent dot.com boom these so-called e-Project' services became increasingly popular in the A/E/C (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industry. This industry has started to refer to these products as project web sites'. Their basic service component is a web enabled information space' for building teams offered through an Application Service Provider (ASP) business model, and accessible via an Extranet requiring only a standard web browser. An expanding set of web hosted applications is meanwhile included in most products, e.g. for messaging and calendaring, data and document management, design reviews and project management. This paper shows how the functionality of project web sites can be enriched by adding advanced task coordination features. Such features are especially relevant for design management. In particular, the paper deals with the need to support the formation and coordination of spontaneous short-lived sub-teams in the course of a project. A crucial element of these self-appointed' teams is the need to establish rapid agreement on a shared coordination template for the execution of the task at hand. It will be demonstrated how task templates for that purpose can be defined and managed. The chosen solution serves as a task sensitive filter to the overwhelming amount of documents stored typically on a project web site. The approach will be demonstrated on a daily exercise in academic environments: the abstract and paper review process in the preparation of a conference.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: collaboration; design management; internet; project space
Index terms: information sharing, business model, internet, project management, coordination, exercise, conference, building team, design management, collaboration, documents, functionality
Subjects: management, data exchange, professional development, project management theory and practice, design process, leadership, research dissemination and communication, business, health behaviours and lifestyles, computing systems, design features
Topics: Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Information Management, Project Management, Research Practice, Digital Applications, Design Practice, Human Resources, Organizational Design
Descriptive scope: 2 PC

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