CITE announces plan to encourage small and medium-sized construction firms to join the e-trading supply chain
Construction Industry Trading Electronically is to offer advice to small and medium-sized construction firms on electronic exchange. The industry-owned e-business organisation is looking to raise awareness among SMEs and offer support.

CITE hopes to get funding from the Department of Trade and Industry to conduct a two-year study into helping SMEs understand electronic trading.

The study will be carried out in the West Midlands, with the help of the West Midlands Centre for the Built Environment. Sue Langley, project executive at CITE said: "The centre has already been offering advice to 350 SMEs on how to trade electronically. If we get the funding to carry out the project, the centre will select six of those firms for us to go to and help get up to speed with electronic exchange. I will use those experiences to write up practical guidelines on how electronic exchange works for SMEs."

She added that a national steering group would monitor the experiences of the West Midlands group, and see if they could be used across the country.

The Federation of Master Builders has also offered its support to the project. CITE will survey 1000 of its members on the usefulness of the guidelines.

Langley said major construction companies had complained that smaller firms weren't using electronic trading. "It only works if everyone in the supply chain does it," she added, "and we need to raise awareness among the smaller firms of how it can work."

The move comes on the back of news that the National Federation of Builders is to offer advice to its members on IT, as reported in last month's Construction Computing. An NFB survey revealed that knowledge of IT was a weakness for its 4000 members, and the NFB is to offer advice and training in partnership with the Construction Industry Training Board.