SupplyPoint: An integrated system supporting E-business in the Construction Sector

The rapid evolution of e-business in the past few years has introduced new ways for organisations to perform standard processes. In the construction sector most of the efforts have been focused on the tendering and bidding process. As a result many electronic tendering systems have already been developed and are currently in use, mainly in the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, supporting basically the search for tenders and the acquisition of tender documents. The SupplyPoint system has been developed in order to electronically support and automate the whole tendering/bidding process providing, in addition to search facilities of current systems, a collaboration platform that could support - in a virtual manner - the formation of consortia. The system is partly funded by the European Commission under the ESPRIT Programme (EP-27007) and is currently under the final stage of development and testing.