A SURVEY OF ICT USE IN THE TURKISH CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

The Authors
M. Sarshar, Faculty of Built Environment, University of West of England, Bristol, UK
U. Isikdag, School of Construction and Property Management, University of Salford, Salford, UK


Abstract
This paper assesses the awareness and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) systems within the Turkish construction industry. The findings will assist in identifying the future directions and priorities for how to use ICT as an enabler in this country. The research has been carried out via 22 semi-structured interviews with senior construction professionals within government and private organizations. It investigated the usage and applicability of current information systems and technologies. The interviews then explored the appropriateness of some of the newly emerging technologies to the industry in Turkey. The findings are reported under three categories of: ICT infrastructures and strategies, the use of information systems, and views on emerging technologies. The last item has been expanded and discussed in more detail, in the paper.



Introduction
Construction companies face dramatic changes in today's competitive market conditions. ICT is increasingly becoming a competitive tool in this market place. The industry is taking a fresh view of how to use ICT in order to improve productivity of the sector (Sarshar et al., 2002).
This paper explores the current use and needs of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the Turkish construction industry. The authors interviewed 22 senior practitioners in government organisations, professional institutes, major construction contractors and academics between September-December 2001.


The aim of this study was to investigate the use and the priorities of ICT in the Turkish Construction Industry. This assists in setting an agenda for future developments and directions. The interviews also added value by raising discussion and awareness of the issues, within the industry.


The research methodology was based on literature research and semi-structured interviews. The authors conducted a literature search on the global directions and needs for ICT within the construction industry. This was followed by semi-structured interviews to establish how Turkey fits into the global picture.
The global directions for construction ICT
Background literature research was carried out to identify the international research perspectives on the needs of ICT in construction. In particular, the following works were examined in detail.
A Vision for Construction IT 2005-2010 (Sarshar et al., 2000), examines how construction projects and their processes will be supported by ICT in the next 5-10 years. The vision was formed after academic and industrial expert workshops, and was formatted in the form of seven major themes.
ELSEWISE (www.Lboro.ac.uk/elsewise) was an EU funded research project. ELSEWISE is a user reference project directed at understanding the information flows within the industry. It then defined the Information Technology and Product Data Technology needs of the European large-scale engineering industry. The ELSEWISE project was a pilot study, which focused on industry requirements and had a bias towards building and civil engineering construction.
Priority Topics for Construction Information Technology (Aouad et al., 1996) examined the priorities of ICT in the UK construction industry for the next 10 years. The paper started with examining 1990-1996 period, to understand the priority topics for the construction of ICT in the future. Sixteen ICT topics were identified in the paper and a questionnaire survey was conducted with academics and industrialists to identify the priority topics.
Information Technology in Construction – Making IT Happen (NSW Government Discussion Paper, 1998) proposed the NSW Government (Australia) strategy to improve construction processes through the use of information technology. This strategy aimed to improve productivity, thereby, reducing cost and time of the capital works procurement process. It also aimed to improve the delivery of a building or facility, meeting clients' needs. The role of ICT in the future of the construction industry was discussed, and a three-step approach was proposed for bringing about a rational adoption by the industry of information technology.
Defining a Research Agenda for AEC Process/Product Development in 2000 was a workshop held by Berkeley-Stanford in 1999. It aimed at defining a research agenda for AEC Process/Product Development in 2000 and beyond. The proceedings of this workshop have been examined to find out new trends of construction ICT in the world. Over 150 papers were presented. In particular, the following papers were examined: Brandon (1999), Brouwers (1999), Broyd (1999), Case and Griffith (1999), De Grassi et al. (1999), ElSersy and Haddad, (1999), Fix (1999), Froese (1999), Hobbs and Dawood (1999), Horvath (1999), Howard (1999), Issa (1999), Junge (1999), Kunz (1999), Kuprenas (1999), Mahalingam (1999), Pace (1999) Prudhomme (1999), Sawhney (1999), Scarponcini (1999), Schwegler (1999), Shi (1999), Soibelman (1999), Songer (1999), Teicholz (1999), Thabet (1999), Turk (1999), Veeramani and Russell (1999), Wang (1999), van Woundenberg (1999) and Zhilang (1999).
The other work examined was “A Survey of Computer use in the New Zealand Building and Construction Industry” (Doherty,1997).
Summary of literature search findings
Based on the literature search, one can categorise the use of information technology in construction as follows.
ICT as an enabler for integration through the use of 3D modelling and visualisation applications, virtual reality (VR) applications, object-based product models, four-dimensional computer aided design, and construction process simulation applications.
ICT as an enabler for collaboration and knowledge management through the use of virtual engineering teams using Groupware applications, knowledge and expertise management systems, data and knowledge warehouses, enterprise management systems, advanced AI applications (decision support systems, expert systems, neural network).
ICT as an enabler of new ways of procurement and site management through the use of: digital catalogues, GIS applications, and mobile computing. The needs of construction industry to adopt the new information technologies are addressed through business integration, software integration, formulating data exchange standards of Internet ICT education, implementing the project life cycle perspective, desktop engineering, and implementing the virtual enterprise approach.
ICT as an enabler for process improvement through the use of work flow tools, process mapping and modelling, KPI measurement tools.
In the light of these international views, semi-structured interview questions were developed to establish the situation in Turkey.
Analysis of current situation in Turkey
The Turkish survey was based on semi-structured interviews. The participants were all senior industry or government figures. The detail of the participants is given in the Appendix. Each interview lasted approximately for 2 h. It started with a presentation that explained the concepts of construction using information technology, and how construction organisations can benefit from IT. After the presentation, the participant was interviewed around the semi-structured questionnaire, which is explained below. After the questionnaire the priorities of Turkish construction ICT were explored through an open discussion.
The questionnaire consisted of three parts. Part one investigated the general ICT infrastructure and use within an organization. Questions were asked about hardware platforms, networking architectures and operating systems. To understand organisations view on information technology, questions were asked on the current importance of ICT to the organization and future plans for expansion in this area.
Part two consisted of questions about various ICT applications and systems. The topics were identified after investigating similar studies in the world, as explained in Section 2. The questions considered the local situation of the Turkish construction industry.
The participants were interviewed about their use of group ware tools, CAD applications, cost estimating applications, project management tools, geographical information systems (GIS), multimedia tools, AI applications (e.g. Neural Networks), construction simulation applications, VR tools and applications, office automation systems and engineering analysis tools. The organisations were also asked about their use of databases.
Part three was more of an open discussion. The participants were asked to choose/identify the important topics for Turkey from the set of topics listed above. The participants shared their views on the research/development/education (RDE) activities to enable the Turkish construction industry to fully benefit from IT.
Part 1 findings: ICT infrastructure and strategy of the Turkish construction industry
In this section, participant organizations were asked about their hardware platforms, their operating systems and the importance of ICT to their current and future operations.
The majority of the organisations (95 per cent) use PC's. Microsoft Windows OSs are dominant in the industry (90 per cent) and most of the firms are planning to upgrade to Microsoft Windows 2000/XP in the near future.
The majority of the organisations (90 per cent) have LAN and 37 per cent of them also have WAN that helps them to communicate with their construction sites and offices around Turkey. Nearly all of the respondents (95 per cent) are currently using client/server as a network architecture.
A small percentage (19 per cent) of the respondents use their network as an Intranet/Extranet. These organizations would also like to achieve improved material procurement through the use of Intranets. The companies, which have operations abroad, use Internet as a communication media. They consider the Internet as a very cost-effective solution to their communication problems.
Sixty per cent of the organizations believe that their usage of ICT is at the strategic level and ICT is critical to sustain their future business strategy. Forty per cent of them believe that their usage of ICT is at turnaround level and ICT may be important to the future success of their organisation.
Part 2 findings: the use of information systems in Turkish construction industry
This consisted of questions about various ICT applications and systems. The systems categories were selected after examining similar studies in the world, during the literature search.
The results indicate that a minority (17 per cent) of firms use decision support systems (DSS). The DSS used here generally comes as a part of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package and extracts strategic operational information. The majority (55 per cent) of the firms believe that construction professionals will become more familiar to DSS in the next 5 years.
E-mail, which is used by 81 per cent of the firms, appears to be the most commonly used electronic communication tool. Chat is rarely used (22 per cent) and only 20 per cent of the firms use e-papers and e-drawings. The respondents have never mentioned that they use whiteboard or discussion forums. The results show that the Turkish construction industry does not fully benefit from groupware tools and applications.
Majority of the firms (64 per cent) use CAD tools for 2D and 3D designs. Forty-six per cent of the firms are aware of the advantages of electronic drawing exchange and VRML, but most of them (64 per cent) cannot use them due to lack of educated staff. The respondents also think that CAD related technologies would change the way they exchange design information in the next 5 years.
Majority of the firms (64 per cent) use computer aided cost estimation (CACE) tools as stand alone software packages, which are not integrated with any project management package. Some ERP software (e.g. Oracle Suite and J.D. Edwards software are adopted as an ERP tool for the Turkish construction industry) have some components/modules that are used in cost estimation process. The minority of cost estimation software (20 per cent) can automatically calculate the cost by using CAD drawings. Fifty per cent of the respondents believe that the new procurement philosophies and e-commerce will make today's CACE software redundant, and Internet related technologies will change the way we use CACE software.
Most of the firms (64 per cent) use off-the shelf packages for time and resource planning and management. Primavera P3 and Microsoft Project are dominant packages in the market. Forty-five per cent of the respondents believe that the Internet and related technologies will change project management concepts, and the industry will share project management information via electronic project management portals. They believe that research should be focused on CPM and PERT related resource planning tools that could be accessed over the Internet.
When asked about the use of databases, the results show that 50 per cent of all the respondents use databases to hold customer contact details, stock details, material specific information and machinery details. Forty-one per cent use databases to store time and resource planning information. Ten per cent use databases to hold information about their e-papers and e-drawings. The majority (64 per cent) of the respondents think the developments in database technologies will change the traditional database approach to object oriented databases and also think that developments in database technologies will have a positive impact on the way they exchange information.
When asked if they use data warehousing and data mining tools, 55 per cent replied no, but it is foreseeable that most of them will start to use data warehousing tools in the near future.
The minority (10 per cent) of the respondents uses GIS for site planning or in surveying practice. The majority (60 per cent) of the firms think that in the near future GIS tools will help them in site selection, and management.
Twenty-five per cent of the respondents use multimedia applications for improving communication with customers and 18 per cent use it for training purposes. Thirty-six per cent of the respondents do not use multimedia applications. Half of the respondents (50 per cent) are willing to use Internet-based multimedia applications in the near future, and also think that multimedia applications will be used as a main tool in company presentations and in firm training activities.
None of the respondents use neural network applications. The industry is not aware of the importance of advanced AI. Also, none of the respondents are using tools for construction process simulation; only 22 per cent of them think that they are going to use construction process simulation tools or 4D CAD in the next 5 years. Most of the firms believe that these tools will not turn into commercial products in the next 10 years.
The VR applications are rarely used. One out of 22 respondents uses VR technology, but 45 per cent of the respondents are willing to use VR applications in the near future.
Eighty-six per cent of the respondents use all components of office automation systems (word processing, spreadsheet, etc). Microsoft products are commonly used products in this area. Half of the respondents (50 per cent) believe that they will use Internet-based office automation systems in the near future.
Part 3 findings: Turkish construction industry's view on emerging information technologies
This was an open discussion section. The participants were presented with a number of topics. They were asked to discuss the importance of these topics to the future of their organisation and the industry. The results indicate the perceived priorities, as well as non-critical issues for the future of construction ICT in Turkey.
The topics, which were discussed, included: 3D modelling and visualisation, virtual engineering teams and GroupWare applications, knowledge warehouses, object oriented product models, digital catalogues, VR applications, GIS applications, 4D computer aided design, AI applications, and supporting activities and ideas include implementing the life cycle thinking, understanding the system perspective, understanding the virtual enterprise concept, participating in ICT training activities and understanding the concept of desktop engineering.
The results of this part are explained in detail in the following sections.
Priority topics for the future of construction of ICT in Turkey
During the Part 3 discussion, the following topics were perceived as priority areas.
3D modelling and visualisation
Kunz (1999) argues that effective visualisation of both product and process models is required to enable all facility stakeholders to understand models, and identify their impacts on their work plans. Schwegler (1999) explains that the industry needs fully parametric 3D modelling tools.
Eighteen per cent of respondents found 3D modelling and visualisation as a vital area, while 50 per cent found it as an important area. Organisations are currently seeking qualified employees in this area.
The industrialists would like to see more research in the area of integration of 3D modelling applications with other applications like analysis tools, cost estimation packages and project management packages.
Object oriented product and project models
Case and Griffith (1999) explains, shared engineering models based on object oriented and relational databases are the next major step in collaborative engineering.
In this context, product models provide models for the final construction product, namely the building (Froese, 1995). A project model is a model that combines both product and process views (Alshawi and Putra, 1997) in the construction life cycle, whereas, a product model would include building objects such as walls, doors and foundation, a project model would also include items such as schedule, subcontractor, contract, etc. A project model defines
how a building is built, and
provides details of the components of the building.
Thirty-two per cent of the firms find the project model approach as vital and 36 per cent of the respondents find this approach important.
It is interesting to note that the interviewees were aware of the importance of product models despite the fact that it is a new emerging technology. The respondents think object oriented project models will be important in the future of construction ICT. But R&D activities in Turkey do not seem satisfactory in this area. They will use off-the shelf packages when these kinds of products become commercially available.
Integration of software
Zhiliang (1999) argues that we have to find methodologies for software integration. Firms stated that they have data, time and financial losses because the software used for different aspects of the project are not integrated. For example, you cannot extract time planning information from a CAD drawing or you cannot transfer data from project planning package to a workflow management system.
Thirty-six per cent of the respondents find this subject as a vital issue and 18 per cent grade it as an important requirement.
GroupWare applications in construction
Pace (1999) states that Internet and computer aided communication enables project partners to have a real time access to the same information (regardless of the location), and to make the changes in collaboration rather than isolation. The collaboration in construction has been found as one of the most important topics.
The participants think that communication is a big problem on large-scale multi-national projects and groupware tools appear as the only cost-effective solution to this problem. Firms believe that they can reduce financial and knowledge losses by effective use of collaboration systems.
Fifty percent of the industry think that their communication problems will be solved by advanced ICT applications and find this subject as a vital area of research for the future. Twenty three percent of the respondents find this subject as an important area of Construction IT.
Data warehousing applications
Data warehousing applications has been found as a vital area of research by 36 per cent of the participants and has been found important by 23 per cent.
Companies believe that they do not have a reasonable level of control on their data and explain that data warehousing and data mining techniques will be very helpful to manage data resources.
Knowledge warehousing applications
Brandon (1999) believes in the need of knowledge warehouses to enable knowledge sharing between all parties. Although we use the term “warehousing” for both data and knowledge, knowledge warehousing differs from data warehousing. As we know information is the processed form of data. The knowledge is defined as the ability to turn information and data into effective action. Knowledge warehousing is a more advanced subject and KM applications are more advanced applications, usually that depend on AI algorithms.
Forty-five per cent of the industry finds knowledge warehousing applications as a vital area of research and 23 per cent of them think it as an important requirement for industry. They believe that this area will minimise the loss of information and lead to improved communications.
Effective use of ERP in the construction industry
Thirty-two per cent of the firms think that the effective use of ERP is a vital area for the construction of ICT. For 23 per cent, this subject is important for the industry.
Many of the firms complain that, most off-the shelf ERP packages (e.g. Oracle, J.D. Edwards, SAP) do not fit and cannot be tailored for the construction industry. They believe that the main reason for is that these packages have been developed to address the needs of manufacturing sector, and are not easily applicable to the management of construction projects.
Multimedia applications
Multimedia applications are found as a vital requirement by 14 per cent of the respondents, but 55 per cent consider it as an important topic.
Multimedia can be used as an efficient medium for marketing and educational purposes. The industry is aware of the benefits of multimedia applications, but there is a lack of trained employees.
The industry mostly outsources multimedia projects but with IT-training they think they will be able to develop multimedia applications to use for in-house education and marketing.
Digital product catalogues
De Grassi et al. (1999) used XML to implement B2B electronic commerce among small and medium sized companies. In his demonstrator, the designer can choose among online catalogues of several suppliers, and integrate the product data of the item in the product model she is working on.
Thirty-two per cent of the respondents think that digital catalogues will be a vital tool for the future of procurement and 36 per cent of them find it as an important requirement. Digital catalogues will be an effective medium for the construction procurement in the future.
Information technology training for construction industry professionals
Pace (1999) explains that the construction industry will face specific challenges in implementing this new technology. Re-education and training will be necessary to promote wide acceptance of technology. ICT training has been found as the most important requirement of construction ICT in Turkey.
Fifty-five per cent of the respondents think that training as a vital issue and 18 per cent of them think it is important. All firms agree that their employees need more ICT training.
Non-critical issues
The participants perceived the following issues as non-critical.
VR applications are found to be non-critical for the future. The firms think they cannot afford to invest in expensive hardware. The industry is aware of the benefits of VR, but they do not think investments on VR would be feasible in the next 5 years. This is due to the fact that the industrialists' understanding of VR is high-end expensive platforms. They are not familiar with low-end PC-based VR applications.
CAD and life cycle applications are not found critical for the near future. The participants think these systems will not be fully beneficial in modelling all construction processes and in allocating all the resources. The participants think a lot of research should be focused on resource planning in integrated systems and they think that these systems should be able to manage workflows, before they can become commercial tools.
Data standardisation. The Turkish industry does not seem to be aware of data standardisation needs and efforts. The benefits of IFCs, XML and STEP related technologies could not be understood by industry, and the subject was marked as non-critical.
Process simulation. The industry thinks that construction processes are fuzzy and cannot be simulated effectively.
AI application. The results show that the participants are not aware of advanced AI and its benefits.
GIS systems. The industry believes that off-the-shelf GIS systems are important. However, the major barrier is the absence of educated staff. In general, the potential benefits and applications of GIS are not fully appreciated by the industrialists.
Desktop engineering. The industrialists strongly disagrees with the approach of desktop engineering. They believe that an experienced engineer should not sit in an office and should rather work on the construction site. This result is in contradiction with the situation in Europe, where it is important to improve workforce productivity. In Turkey, the workforce is currently relatively cheap.
Virtual enterprise. The industrialists explain that the ICT infrastructure in Turkey is insufficient to support a virtual enterprise environment. Activities such as e-bidding will not be successful in Turkey, before the country has a well-developed ICT infrastructure.
Discussion on the perceived future needs
Table I shows a summary of critical and non-critical topics. There are some contradictory results in this table. For example, some of the technologies are overlapping and there is much synergy in how they are applied, as well as their benefits. However, one is identified as critical, and the other as non-critical. These include:
modeling and visualisation VS VR technologies
object oriented project models VS IFCs and data exchange standards
integration of software VS 4D CAD and project life cycle approach
This indicates that there is no shared understanding of these concepts.
Some of the findings are also inconsistent with the global research directions. In particular, the interviewees found the areas of GIS and AI non-critical. This is in contrast to much of the existing work in this area. For example, Isikdag (1999), Prudhomme (1999) and Veermani and Russell (1999) are some of the researchers who demonstrate how AI can benefit the industry. Sarshar et al. (2000) and Zhilang (1999) provide examples of how GIS could add value.
Despite these areas of inconsistencies, there are also some areas where the Turkish needs are different to the needs of more developed countries. For example:
In Turkey the workforce is relatively cheap. Therefore, the commercial drivers for automation of some tasks do not exist.
The ICT infrastructure of SMEs is very limited. This limits the use of construction portals and document management systems on a project-wide basis.
However, the larger contractors who operate globally seem to have systems similar to the EU countries, for their internal use.
During the interviews, the industrialists indicated the need for an action plan, which will explain the responsibilities of the State, contractors, consultants, procurers and other parties to enable effective use of ICT in the Turkish construction industry. Turkish Association of Informatics mentioned that they are ready to share their ideas and experience with the authors to prepare this action plan. According to the participants, this action plan should address the following issues.
Responsibilities of the state:
state should increase ICT training activities for all its construction engineers and designers, and
tax reduction should be made to ICT investments of construction firms.
Responsibilities of the companies:
ICT training should be given in tactical and strategic levels of the organisation, and
ICT investments should be increased.
Responsibilities of the universities:
further ICT education should be given to engineers and architects.
Some of the developing countries such as Singapore (Singapore Ministry of Power and Ministry of Development, 1999) and Malaysia (Hamid and Sarshar, 2002) are currently experimenting with such government led initiatives. It is still too early to learn from the experiences of these countries.
Conclusions and future research
This paper examined the ICT capabilities of the Turkish construction industry, via 22 interviews with senior industrialists. It highlighted the current capabilities, and explored the perceived future priorities.
Some key findings from the interviews are as follows.
The Turkish construction industry faces similar challenges as other countries, in terms of difficulties in communication and loss of information.
IT is viewed as strategic by senior industry figures. They are, therefore, prepared to spend time and effort in order to increase awareness and improve training.
In general, the software packages used by larger organisations are similar to the ones used in Europe. However, the SMEs have less ICT awareness and capabilities. It is, therefore, more complex to use ICT across the supply chain.
Owing to the absence of trained staff, many of the technologies are underutilised. ICT education is critical for future advancement and uptake of technology by the industry.
The workforce in Turkey is cheaper than in Europe. Therefore, the business needs for automation of some of the processes are less urgent.
The industrialists prioritised the following RDE themes for Turkey, which need to be addressed through national R&D funding and initiatives:
modelling and visualisation,
object oriented product models,
integration of software,
GroupWare applications,
data warehousing applications,
knowledge warehousing applications,
effective use of ERP systems,
multimedia applications,
digital catalogues, and
information technology training.
In order to maximise the benefits of ICT in the short-term, the community needs to focus on education and training. Currently, there are no university taught programmes in this area. There are also no government bodies which promote training in ICT skills within the Turkish construction industry. Training must address the differing requirements of senior industrialists, managers and professionals.
In the long term, the industry needs to engage in R&D programmes, linking local and global industry needs to current and future technological directions. Turkey is recognised as an associate European state and can participate in EU research agenda. This type of networking and research would expand and enhance the knowledge base in Turkey.
In the medium-term, the government must focus on creating a supply, and demand relationship among the academics and industrialists to maximise exploitation and commercialisation of technologies and knowledge. This also remains a challenge for construction of ICT in Europe. Some of the European barriers to commercialisation of ICT are explored in Sarshar (2004). It is important to learn from the experiences across the countries, in order to address this critical need.
The interview participants indicated a need to set-up a national body, which can address these short-, medium- and long-term requirements. This body must have representation from the state, contractors, consultants, procurers, universities and other potential stakeholders. It is important to learn from the experiences of other developing countries such as Singapore and Malaysia who have already taken initiative in this area.

PREPARED BY NORHANA BINTI MUSTAFFA (2008261158)