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This paper aims to identify the challenges of Hong Kong and overseas developers in project management when undertaking real estate projects in China, and then focuses on how to mitigate and solve the problems. The proposed solution is about a concept of using the IT tool “web‐based construction project management system” (WPMS) to help assuring projects success in China. The study reported in this paper focuses on how to implement WPMS to manage construction projects in China considering the overall situation, limitations and Chinese culture.

Case studies and interviews were adopted to identify the main reasons why experienced Hong Kong developers have apparently been outperformed by the capital‐deprived local developers in China. SWOT was applied to analyse project failure factors. Afterwards, 49 web‐based construction project management software systems were reviewed to identify their features, their client expectations, the technology propagation modes, and the most emphasized functions in the construction stage. An in‐depth case study was adopted to test the hypothesis that web‐based construction project system could help Hong Kong developers to properly manage their projects in China.

Cooperation and coordination difficulties among participants caused by long geographical project distance and remote management control were identified to be the main causes of project failure. Web‐based construction project management system was proved to be efficient and effective in cross region project coordination and monitoring. Since property development business is a continuing and non‐one‐off activity, the investment of a tailor made WPMS is really good value for money. Concerning the low readiness of business partners in China, an encouraging pattern with more self‐incentives should be considered for achieving a win‐win‐win situation as an essential tactic as proposed in this paper.

How to evaluate the benefit of using WPMS in quantitative method remains a challenge. Future research could compare the project with WPMS and without WPMS.

The case study of the application of a tailor‐made web‐based project management system (named ICPMS) by one of the major developers in Hong Kong has demonstrated that the headquarters in Hong Kong is able to get timely first hand project information, facilitating timely decisions and ensuring project success. Thus, the adoption of WPMS is a worthwhile investment for overseas developers undertaking real estate development projects in China.

This paper puts forward the concept of overseas developers using WPMS to help assure project success in China. Chinese culture and other limitation factors were considered for the first time in WPMS implementation in the construction industry. How to make the implementation of WPMS to successfully overcome such barriers is illustrated based on this empirical study.

Supply chain networks are generally associated with inter‐organisational communications, leading to reduction of time delays in services and information flows. Recognising the importance of communication, this paper deals with the management of information across a network of organisations that are involved in the design and construction process. The paper presents an overview of problems associated with the process of managing construction project information and explores the key role Web‐based technology systems can play in making this process more effective. The paper also reports on the utilisation of such a system on a number of construction projects. It discusses the efficiency gained in the traditional process of architectural drawings transmittal, and reports on a questionnaire survey targeting system users to gain some insight into their perception of its usefulness, performance and role in improving communications amongst the entire project team.

Effective management and utilisation of plant history data can considerably improve plant and equipment performance. This rationale underpins statistical and mathematical models for exploiting plant management data more efficiently, but industry has been slow to adopt these models. Reasons proffered for this include: a perception of models being too complex and time consuming; and an inability of their being able to account for dynamism inherent within data sets. To help address this situation, this research developed and tested a web‐based data capture and information management system. Specifically, the system represents integration of a web‐enabled relational database management system (RDBMS) with a model base management system (MBMS). The RDBMS captures historical data from geographically dispersed plant sites, while the MBMS hosts a set of (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average – ARIMA) time series models to predict plant breakdown. Using a sample of plant history file data, the system and ARIMA predictive capacity were tested. As a measure of model error, the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) ranged between 5.34 and 11.07 per cent for the plant items used in the test. The Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) values also showed similar trends, with the prediction model yielding the highest value of 29.79 per cent. The paper concludes with direction for future work, which includes refining the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and developing a Knowledge Based Management System (KBMS) to interface with the RDBMS.

The advent of web services and the semantic web have opened up opportunities for a new generation of interoperable systems on the web. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance of semantics in design and construction, and how this has long been recognised and addressed to varying extents by researchers.

There is now the potential for designs to be developed through a system of collaborating design services and for input by the construction team members. The potential also extends to the construction phase where the designers can provide more timely responses to problems encountered in the field. Within this environment, there is the need for effective mechanisms for design and construction information management, in addition to an ontology that facilitates the sharing of design and construction information and the underlying semantics. This paper explores these trends in collaborative design and construction, and presents an ontology‐based approach to project information management in a semantic web environment.

The findings include a framework for semantic web‐based information management (SWIMS), which provides for effective collaborative information management. Examples, based on design and construction information, are presented to illustrate the key concepts.

This paper presents an innovative approach to overcoming the limitations of conventional information management approaches in construction. The proposed approach is expected to enhance collaboration, and avoid information loss, overload and misunderstanding,

This work describes a case study that KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) has implemented to establish the NUCLIS21 (nuclear information system 21), a total Web‐based information management system (IMS) with a view to playing an active role as one of the leading national nuclear information centres. Through a user‐friendly single interface, the system aims at not only building infrastructure for the national nuclear digital information, but also improving the existing IMS at the technical information department in the KAERI. This system is designed to help users and system managers to access the system easily and to provide MyLibrary, a customised function, to a particular user. The retrieval efficiency of the system is significantly heightened due to the adoption of such state‐of‐the‐art technologies as middleware and the retrieval engine. This system was designed as a unified network system through connection to the MIS (management information system) of the Institute.

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)–National Metallurgical Laboratory (CSIR–NML) has launched a number of initiatives in different perspectives of e-Government. The “Mandays-Involvement” website was implemented by the laboratory in Government-to-Employee (G2E) perspective i.e. facilitating its research and development (R&D) manpower by providing data with respect to their own performance parameters through a single window. The development and implementation of the website had two major objectives : (1) to provide a system to the researchers for tracking and improving their own performance with respect to mandays and external cash flow generation and (2) to equip the management with a tool to enhance the organizational performance and enable optimum employee utilization.

Software Development Life Cycle approach was followed for the web-based system development and iterative model was used. Open source web development tools i.e. Php, My-Sql and CSS were used for the system development.

The new system helped in detailed profiling of current and future assignment of the researchers so as to have a check over preference-based allocation of work and providing equal opportunities of work to all.

The percentage average mandays utilization was stabilized after the implementation of the website. The percentage under and over engagements of researchers in R&D projects was controlled and reduced.

The system outputs are utilized for R&D Team formation, Project approvals and Annual Performance Evaluations.

This new information system acts as a decision support system that helps the management to align its organizational policies toward the Future Research Projects and R&D manpower.

This paper aims to present findings from research that evaluate the defects/snagging management process at construction project level and review the potential for the operation of a novel, paper‐based, records management mechanism.

The design and use of a hybrid electronic/paper‐based snagging management system are discussed. The design and practicalities of the system are considered as a means towards demonstrating that a link currently exists between modern IT systems and traditional, paper‐based methods of document transfer.

The paper finds that the snagging aspect of construction projects is often overlooked and under‐estimated. Construction projects require systems that facilitate data input and records management processing, thus removing the reliance upon traditional methods of working. A highly advanced digital pen and paper technology is discussed which has the potential to totally revolutionise the collection of information on paper (for all organisations). The IT system can be adapted for a range of processes/needs which aids not only management but also the individuals on the frontline responsible for collecting site‐based records.

The system highlighted has the potential to be adopted within every construction‐based organisation and indeed wider industrial sectors due to its unique adaptability and ease with which features can be incorporated. There are a number of business benefits to be accrued from the adoption of digital pen and paper‐based IT systems.

Extremely novel technology is discussed. The value to the construction industry and wider industrial sectors is the opportunity to continue working using existing processes, whilst at the same time becoming wholly electronic.

The fashion industry faces more challenges from demand uncertainty than many other businesses because it creates products that are highly seasonal with short lifetimes and demand is inherently volatile. Such a situation introduces difficulties in fashion supply chain management. The solution to the agile supply chain involves setting up seamless or boundary-less connections between supply chain members. These connections can minimize buffers between the different stages in the chain. In an agile network, such connection is critical and can be enabled by web-software, allowing different actors to be connected without needing to have the same computer system. With integrated web systems, businesses in different geographical locations can behave as if they belong to the same enterprise. The forecasting of future sales is one of the key constituents of these solutions. Today’s enterprises in fashion often employ various IT services in supply chain operations and a forecasting system is often expected to be accessible by independent users and systems through a standardized interface. Therefore, web-software is the right solution in this circumstance. There are many methods in the sales forecasting field. In this paper, we focus on exploring the implementation of a web-based forecasting system in which various forecasting methods can be utilized. This web-based forecasting system is expected to bring great flexibility into fashion enterprise operations and enhance their supply chain management. A case analysis is presented in the paper in which a neural network is utilized as the forecasting method. We believe that the implementation mechanism is highly applicable to help fashion companies in improving their operations.

Completing construction projects within the planned schedule has widely been considered as one of the major project success factors. This study investigates the use of technologies to address delays in construction projects and aims to address three research questions (1) to identify the adopted technologies and proposed solutions in the literature, (2) to explore the reasons why the delays cannot be prevented despite disruptive technologies and (3) to determine the major strategies to prevent delays in construction projects.

In total, 208 research articles that used innovative technologies, methods, or tools to avoid delays in construction projects were investigated by conducting a comprehensive literature review. An elaborative content analysis was performed to cover the implemented technologies and their transformation, highlighted research fields in relation to selected technologies, focused delay causes and corresponding delay mitigation strategies and emphasized project types with specific delay causes. According to the analysis results, a typological framework with appropriate technological means was proposed.

The findings revealed that several tools such as planning, imaging, geo-spatial data collection, machine learning and optimization have widely been adopted to address specific delay causes. It was also observed that strategies to address various delay causes throughout the life cycle of construction projects have been overlooked in the literature. The findings of the present research underpin the trends and technological advances to address significant delay causes.

Despite the technological advancements in the digitalization era of Industry 4.0, many construction projects still suffer from poor schedule performance. However, the reason of this is questionable and has not been investigated thoroughly.

There is an increasing recognition of the value of effective information and knowledge management (KM) in the construction project delivery process. Many architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organisations have invested heavily in information technology and KM systems that help in this regard. While these have been largely successful in supporting intra‐organisational business processes, interoperability problems still persist at the project organisation level due to the heterogeneity of the systems used by the different organisations involved. Ontologies are seen as an important means of addressing these problems. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of ontologies in the construction project delivery process, particularly with respect to information and KM.

A detailed technical review of the fundamental concepts and related work has been undertaken, with examples and case studies of ontology‐based information and KM presented to illustrate the key concepts. The specific issues and technical difficulties in the design and construction context are highlighted, and the approaches adopted in two ontology‐based applications for the AEC sector are presented.

The paper concludes that there is considerable merit in ontology‐based approaches to information and KM, but that significant technical challenges remain. Middleware applications, such as semantic web‐based information management system, are contributing in this regard but more needs to be done particularly on integrating or merging ontologies.

The value of the paper lies in the detailed exploration of ontology‐based information and KM within a design and construction context, and the use of appropriate examples and applications to illustrate the key issues.