Construction’s e-envoy

Tim Cole has been trying to drag construction into the 21st century for more than 10 years and it’s been a long wait. “The frustration is there” he says. “It’s taken a lot of determination to keep going. But some definite progress is being made now”.

Cole wears many different hats in his attempts to computerise construction. As well as being managing director of e-business support company Interlock and vice president of strategic development at Causeway Technologies - the company behind buildingwork.com - he is also the community manager for Construction Industry Trading Electronically (CITE), the industry-owned organisation he refers to as “the construction industry’s e-business department”.

In the beginning ...

Cole was in at the start of construction’s liaison with e-commerce. He set up Interlock in 1994 to help companies in the construction industry develop e-business services, which he had been pushing for five years, but not many people were interested at the time. Not so now, says Cole. “The willingness is there now”, he says, “and the industry has more innovators than many other industries. They just don’t always have the time to make the changes. I think what has happened in the last 18 months is that chief executives are realising what they are losing out by not fully grasping the benefits of e-business.”

Through CITE, Cole has spoken to students taking construction-related degrees, and he is in no doubt that they will grasp the benefits of e-business. “The people who are the future of the industry know it is not sensible to carry on without integrating processes and technologies into the way we work,” he adds.

And for those who haven’t got onboard the e-business bandwagon yet, Cole says there is nothing to fear. “Talk of a revolution is misplaced. It will feel like a revolution if you don’t do it and try to catch up in three years time. But if you stand back and look at it with sanity, e-business is just part of the continuing evolution of the construction process becoming more effective.”

He may have waited a long time to see change, but Cole is now starting to see the fruits of his labours. Through his position at Causeway, he is involved with buildingwork.com, a web portal aiming to provide a complete service to the construction industry. He is bullish about buildingwork.com’s chances of success, and is confident it has an answer to the increasing amount of competition. “There are a lot of people coming into this area and talking a very wide picture. But you have to look at the depth. Our confidence in our position is the knowledge of our unique approach; a consolidated, integrated view of the whole process.”

While some construction web portals may be dotcom flash-in-the-pans, not many would bet against one that has the backing of five of the country’s biggest contractors, such as Arrideo. Cole, however, remains unconvinced. “It will be interesting to see whether people will be prepared to work with organisations that are backed by a particular group of contractors like Arrideo. With buildingwork.com we are keen to make sure we provide a really neutral third party service,” he says.

A call for consolidation

He doesn’t see a large number of construction web portals making it into the future. “I don’t think the industry is best served by a large number of me-or-nothing organisations. There has got to be some consolidation. The key issue is what adds value to a project, particularly from the client’s view.”

As well as his vested interests, Cole has long been a campaigner in the electronic arena for the construction industry. Out of Interlock came Construction Industry Trading Devel-opment, which became Construction Industry Trading Electronically (CITE) five years ago. CITE’s aim is to develop e-business tools for the construction industry, including some bits of soft-ware, and data standards, and to provide support services and training.

One form of support CITE provides is advice on how to get the most out of e-business. “E-business ... is hitting the board room. The danger is companies are jumping on the first e-business bus that comes along. We have already spent time with a couple of very large companies digging them out of expensive holes they got into because they did just that.”

But CITE also has a campaigning side. “We’ve liaised with government bodies, we talk to banks and other industry sectors and we also liaise at an inter-national level on behalf of the UK construction industry. The Japanese ministry of construction came to visit us, and their view was that we were 18 months ahead of them with e-business, because of what we had achieved with CITE.”

Cole is keen to point out the relevance of CITE’s activities to those at the sharp end of construction, too: “We don’t live in the ether, we walk with the muddy boots, looking at the real practical issues. Construction managers are very much at the hot end of the process and they are key people as far as we are concerned.”