Global Design Practice:
IT-based Collaboration In AEC-projects
Author(s)
T. Schroepfer
Abstract
Information technology is radically and rapidly transforming the way the AEC
industry operates. Large, globally operating firms are often out of necessity on
the leading edge of implementing advanced IT-tools because their ability to
prosper depends more and more on their ability to use technology to augment
industry-wide effectiveness and innovation. To maximize the benefits that lie in
company-wide highly integrated information and to foster internal collaboration,
such companies often rely heavily on the use of IT supporting their practices. As
global projects have become the main sources of revenue for many large AEC
firms, geographically distributed project teams and human networks have
become more and more common. A wide array of tools is available for IT-based
collaboration. Global teams and networks face difficulties that are different from
those of teams and networks that are not geographically distributed. These
difficulties are usually caused by national, cultural, and organizational
differences within the organizations and the multitude of markets they are
serving as well as the peculiarities of virtual collaboration. This paper examines
these phenomena using the Germany-based Hochtief Group, one of the world’s
largest AEC companies, as an example. It presents a case study of global virtual
teamwork in a recently completed large-scale project in Asia. It then moves on to
describe Hochtief’s participation in a larger research effort initiated by Stanford
University’s CIFE (Center for Integrated Facility Management) that examines
virtual collaboration in the AEC industry. The results of both the case study and
the joint research project are analyzed and presented. They suggest a number of
important guidelines for global virtual teamwork in the AEC industry, including
the suitability of particular IT-tools as well as the coordination of team members
with different national, cultural, and organizational backgrounds over multiple
time zones.
Keywords: global teamwork, IT-based collaboration, design collaboration,
global design practice, global construction practice, AEC project management.
Keywords
global teamwork, IT-based collaboration, design collaboration,
global design practice, global construction practice, AEC project management.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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