USE OF ICT FOR E-PROCUREMENT IN THE UK CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY: A SURVEY OF SMES READINESS

The UK construction industry has been criticised for poor initial uptake of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and integrated IT systems to support their mainstream activities. In the context of the extent of deployment to the implementation domain and user types, ICT uptake has yet to be recognized by the industry as a whole, when compared to retail, manufacturing and financial service sectors. In addition, there is a considerable amount of ICT deployment in large construction firms who have the ability to invest and maximize the ICT uptake advantage, whilst similar deployment in small to medium sized (SMEs) construction firmsthe followers, has been limited. Therefore, the current state of ICT implementation and deployment in the UK construction industry embraces a number of contrasting characteristics: firms who own ICT systems with a wide range of sophisticated applications and (small) organizations who pilot their embryonic, adhoc and fragmented ICT practices. Recognizing this, the paper investigates the current state of ICT readiness for use in electronic procurement (e-procurement) among UK construction SMEs, and to identify their enthusiasm and commitment to improve business performance through ICT uptake. A structured questionnaire survey was conducted among 220 randomly selected construction SMEs in UK. The results indicate that the majority of the surveyed SMEs are not yet ready for ICT implementation to support routine e-procurement activities.