It is highly emphasized in the literature that inter-organisational relations need close attention before adopting, implementing and sustaining cSCM (Pryke 2009). Despite its significance, however, there exists lack of systematic studies on relationship-centric approach to cSCM (Vrijhoef 2011). What research interest exists is mostly focused on specific relationship types, partnering and collaborative relationships, and lacks consideration of different relational elements (for example IOIS) that play a key role in supply chain interactions. Section 2.4 outlined that integration with key suppliers require three essential elements within its scope: actor, process and technological integration. Although the reviewed literature repeatedly address and highlight the importance of inter-firm collaborative and integrative relationships in all three dimensions of integration; both, the study and practice of cSCM, largely focus on upstream firms—between large contractors and clients, architects, designers—neglecting the firms in downstream supply chain tiers (London 2008; Meng 2013). Contractor organisations are involved with myriad of suppliers however the tools, technologies and processes adopted in practice to facilitate integration are not well-researched from SCM perspective.
With respect to IOIS implementation, existing research largely focus on WPMS (and less so on EDI). The WPMS are commonly used to manage project documentation and information between range of project stakeholders through a web-based platform (Adriaanse et al. 2010). The latter form (EDI) is primarily adopted for the exchange of financial data/information with a certain segment of supplier base (predominantly builder’s merchants) (Alshawi 2007; Samuelson and Björk 2013). Whilst WPMS facilitate collaboration, coordination and project management between the supply chain firms, it generally lacks back- end systems integration, which consequently creates silos of information residing in multiple systems. The latter type (EDI) is also restricted to the financial data exchange and therefore lacks the ability to facilitate cross-functional process integration: for example, complex inter- firm procurement processes from procure-to-pay (McCrea and Peat 2009). There is also a third type of IOIS, that is, Building Information Modelling— or BIM, which embrace a wide range of tools, technologies and processes within its scope to bring together a data rich ‘intelligent’ model in a common data environment (Martínez-Rojas et al. 2015). Although BIM as an IOIS offer interesting opportunities (Grilo and Jardim-Goncalves 2011), its implementation is mostly project-centric and limited to certain disciplines (design management) and project stages (building design and pre-construction) (Eadie et al. 2013).
It follows from the literature review that there is insufficient understanding of how to approach highly integrated IOIS implementation (Jrad and Sundaram 2015a; Kauremaa and Tanskanen 2016; Standing et al. 2010). As indicated above, there are abundance of studies which investigate the use and adoption of WPMS (Adriaanse et al. 2010; Arnold and Javernick- Will 2013; Becerik and Pollalis 2006; Erdogan et al. 2008, 2014; Hjelt and Björk 2007; Lee and Yu 2012; Nitithamyong and Skibniewski 2006, 2011; Peansupap and Walker 2006; Ruikar
et al. 2005; Samuelson and Björk 2013; Sargent et al. 2012; Wong 2007; Wong and Lam 2010), BIM (Aouad and Arayici 2010; Eadie et al. 2013; Hartmann et al. 2012; Jung and Joo 2011; Ozorhon and Karahan 2016; Papadonikolaki and Wamelink 2017; Won et al. 2013) and intra- firm ERP systems implementation (Chung et al. 2008, 2009; Kwak et al. 2012; Ozorhon and Cinar 2015; Tatari et al. 2008; Tatari and Skibniewski 2011; Yang et al. 2007) where the subject matter of these studies is documenting the best practices and critical success factors, innovation diffusion, e-readiness or change management. On the other hand, there are plethora of studies that look into IS/IT development by AEC organisations however they primarily deal with organisational strategies concerning intra-firm technology implementation (Alshawi et al. 2010b; Henderson and Ruikar 2010; Jung and Gibson 1999). As unveiled in Section 2.5, the management of an integrated IOIS is quite different from in-house IS development projects. Moreover, studies that investigate the technology implementation from supply chain context is generally limited to EDI (Lewis 1998; Schnitzler and Österlund 2015). EDI is adopted with a certain number and type of suppliers and, therefore, its implementation is not comprehensive enough to deal with complexities that characterise IOIS implementation with multitude of supply chain firms.
Furthermore, research which offers practical guidance for AEC firms venturing into the world of integrated IOIS—especially in the era of advanced technological solutions such as Cloud-computing—are at best very few. A relatively recent study by Hadaya and Pellerin (2010) is one of the few that explore the determinants of IOIS use and adoption to support the inter-organisational transactional and collaborative processes with supply chain firms. Their findings (based on 67 responses to a questionnaire survey received from construction firms in Canada) reveal a number of relational (supply chain relationship characteristics) and organisational factors (such as readiness and firm size) that influence the use and adoption web- based IOIS. Another more recent example, is the work of Papadonikolaki (2016), who focused on BIM-enabled supply chain partnerships. While such studies provide beneficial guidance for deploying IOIS projects in supply chain context, more work is needed to broaden our knowledge of IOIS implementation projects’ lifecycle.
Akin to implementation management, it is worth noting that there is also a need to study the state-of-the-art in IOIS since procurement technologies have been subject to significant evolution in the last 10 years or so (Ibem and Laryea 2014). Although the prior research has conceptualised or reported a range of integrated WPMS (see, for example, Alshawi and Ingirige 2003; Grilo and Jardim-Goncalves 2013; Liu et al. 2003; Ren et al. 2012; Zhu and Augenbroe 2006), it seems there is insufficient clarity about the interfacing capabilities of the current service providers/platforms with back-end ERP systems to support the inter-firm procurement operations. In this regard, there is a need to delineate the current integration capabilities of construction project management and collaboration systems with external systems. As far as the ERP integration is concerned a number of exploratory studies exist which point out to the low levels of both, internal and external integration of construction enterprise information systems (Kang et al. 2012b; Tatari et al. 2007). In an industry whitepaper by IFS, an ERP solutions provider, it has been pointed out that only a small percentage of engineer-to- manufacture firms (including contractors) utilise the full integration capability of their ERP and project management systems (Lorbiecki 2013). On the other hand, several research studies (Alshawi and Ingirige 2003; Becerik and Pollalis 2006; Charalambous et al. 2012; Liu et al. 2011; Nitithamyong and Skibniewski 2004; Wilkinson 2005) and industry reports (NCCTP 2006) provide a snap-shot of the high-level functionalities of WPMS. It should be noted that there is a constant need to evaluate state-of-the-art in order to assess the gap between theory and practice. In a study of marketed functionalities of WPMS providers Liu et al., (2011) have analysed fourteen vendors however their study did not report any integrative features that allow inter-connection with the back-end ERP systems.
2.7 Summary
The review of literature presented in this section has attempted to bring together the state-of- the-art in cSCM and IOIS which underpins this study. In terms of its adoption and adaptation to construction context, review of prior literature indicates that AEC industry is plagued with many challenges to adequately implement SCM. Nevertheless, integration is regarded by most as a key component of cSCM which must be pursued with strategic or key supply chain firms to realise the benefits of, and opportunities provided by closer engagement with supply chain partners. SCI requires incorporation of the IOIS into the business relationships to facilitate the inter-link between actor, process and technology integration. However, multitude of technical, management and supply chain related issues that have been reported in the literature suggests there is more work needed for developing normative recommendations for industry practitioners as to what, why, when and how to approach IOIS implementation. The next chapter presents the methodology adopted for conducting the research.