RFI Responsiveness of Paper-Based vs. Web-Based Information Processing Systems

Chang-Sun Chin¹

Abstract

Information technologies (IT) have brought many changes to the construction industry. One of the most prevalent is the use of the internet as a vehicle for communication within project teams. Firms may adopt a web-based information processing system to reduce processing time and increase RFI transparency to all project participants. The hypothesis of this research is that a web-based information processing system may increase RFI responsiveness by design teams. The research discusses three similar projects in terms of the type of building, project budget, and construction duration. One of the projects used a paper-based system, and the other two used a web-based system. The flow components were measured to analyze and compare the flow efficiencies of the selected cases. Therefore, the major objective of the research is to investigate the possible factors affecting the RFI responsiveness from the production perspective. The results show that the key factor in achieving high level responsiveness is to increase the flow reliability. The research findings and results can help project teams to diagnose problem areas in their existing systems and to design better performing systems. In particular, flow-performance measures discussed in the paper will provide those using the system with universal and unalterable common metrics for the current state of the system and will help them evaluate and compare the performance of processes.

Keywords

Flow reliability, Information technology, Service level, Variance-to-contractor want, Web-based project information processing.

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Reference

Chin, C. 2010. RFI Responsiveness of Paper-Based vs. Web-Based Information Processing Systems, 18th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction , 631-640. doi.org/

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