Document management - a key IT technology for the construction industry

The IT infrastructure of today offers excellent opportunities for the construction industry to workmore efficiently by managing its documents in a digital form on the Internet. Nevertheless IT has sofar had more effect on the production of documents than on their efficient transfer and retrieval. Inthis paper the historical developments in construction computing over the last decades are outlined;how technical innovations such as photocopying, the fax, the personal computer, local areanetworks and finally the Internet have effected the production, storage, duplication and transfer ofinformation. Key features in current web based document systems are shortly described, withspecial emphasis on alternative search methods such as hierarchical folders or meta datarepositories. The integration of document management systems with other Internet based ASPservicesin vertical construction industry portals is also discussed. The paper finishes by outliningsome current trends, which seem to be leading towards the survival of a few dominant systems.