UK construction processes and IT adoptability: Learning form other industries

Process improvement has been identified as a mechanism of achieving the desired performance improvements of the UK construction industry. During the recent past, researches within UK construction process improvement research paradigm have been influenced by the initiatives of other industries like manufacturing and software. Despite the success stories within such industries, the unique characteristics of the construction industry demand a careful consideration of the applicability of these approaches within a construction environment. Based on a literature review carried out by the authors, this paper discusses the nature of this applicability issue further. In addition to the above applicability issue, construction industry has suffered from a slow information technology (IT) adoptability issue, while IT has been considered as an effective enabler for process improvement in other industries. This has hindered the potential synergetic benefits of using IT within construction process improvement strategies. As such, it is important to understand the reasons behind this slow IT adoptability in order to ensure successful deployment of process improvement initiatives within the UK construction industry. This paper discusses this issue, by reviewing the literature to compare IT adoptability issues of the UK construction industry and other industries, with the aim of learning lessons from those to improve the UK construction industry.

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