THE IMPACT OF THE NCCTP DATA EXCHANGE STANDARD ON THE PROVIDERS OF COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE TO THE UK CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Since 2003 the bulk of major UK construction project collaborative softwa re providers have been working together to develop standards that will allow for project data to be transferred between vendor applications. Under the umbrella of the Network of Construction Collaboratio n Technology Providers (NCCTP) , an XML standard for project exchange has been developed to address user concerns of stability and choice. Through extensive discussions between vendors, a series of object classes and their relationships were defined, describing the data commonly held within a collaborative sy stem. Each participating organisation then extended their application to transfer project data to and from the standard. An extensive testing program between the member organisations showed that projects could be successfully transferred from one vendor's system to another. This paper presents the key aspects of the developed standard, document, user and security sections, and how the model addresses the user communities’ requirements, of supplier confidence, data security and transferability. It then exami nes the impact that the developed standard will have upon vendors who provide collaborative software to the construction industry Contrasting previous information exchange systems developed for these products, the wide industry support given to the standar d ensures that it is applicable throughout all similar products.