ABSTRACT
Virtually all of the surveys carried out in the building construction industry place interoperability as a key issue for the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). This is supported by road map developments such as that carried out for the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) and supporting national efforts. The evidence for available cost benefit comes from a study by the US National Institute for Standards Technology (NIST) (Gallaher et al. 2004) in which the lack of interoperability was estimated in 2004 to cost US industry more than US$15 billion per year. This equates roughly to 1.5 per cent of US construction turnover. However, more recent estimates suggest that this figure is too low, the true figure being closer to US$45 billion or 4.5 per cent of turnover (European Construction Technology Platform 2005).
