An integrated system supporting virtual consortia in the construction sector

Work in today's economic organizations is either performed through the execution of continuous operations or through the implementation of one-off projects; hence one can distinguish between "operation-centric" and "project-centric" business environments. New information and communication technologies facilitate the introduction of innovative organizational structures in both environments. Based on the term "virtual organization," which is used for describing the new organizational structures in operation-centric environments, we introduce the term "virtual consortium" for project-centric environments and provide an analysis of the business processes of a virtual consortium. We concentrate on the construction sector, as one of the most suitable application domains to test the new concept and related systems. Focusing on one of the most critical processes of a virtual consortium, the bidding/ tendering process, we review the existing information systems available on the Internet, which support this process for construction projects. Our results show that although there are a substantial number of systems that support searching for call for tenders, few of them provide support for other vital elements of the bidding/tendering process, such as robust collaboration facilities for the virtual consortium formation and for the management of the bid. We then present the SupplyPoint system, which has been developed in order to electronically support and automate the whole tendering/bidding process of virtual consortia. SupplyPoint provides-in addition to what existing systems already do-a collaboration platform that facilitates, in a virtual manner, the formation of consortia.