ABSTRACT
Data management has an important role to play in the changing environment of construction and it is not just shareholder demand for increased profit margins that is driving this change; reports by Latham and Egan put significant pressure on the industry in the UK. This research paper assesses the value and suitability of providing mobile computing facilities to construction sites with the objective of improving the quality of data management and communication. There is a real need for construction project site offices to utilize modern computing technologies to enable performance improvements to be made.
On small sites, the cost of establishing a suitable Internet connection inhibits the effective use of information technology (IT). A survey of mobile IT stakeholders in the UK construction industry showed that the creation of an Internet connection is a widespread problem yet it was the most important computing requirement. It is inhibited by slow installation and high expense. The introduction of an Intelligent Mobile Office (i-MO) was observed to consider its ability to provide a suitable Internet connection for construction sites. The i-MO, a ‘solution in a box’, uses a variety of bearers – the most useful being the cellular telephone network – to provide mobile Internet connections. The i-MO unit is not without its faults but it promises, once it reaches full operating performance, to provide an effective solution to this dilemma.
