ICT adoption in materials management among construction firms in construction industry

Abstract

Construction materials management plays a significant role in the success and profitability of construction projects. Some of the problems relating to materials management are materials shortages, delays in supply, price fluctuations, damage and wastage, and lack of storage space. To overcome the problem, the advent of ICT has been largely exercised in developed countries to aid and improve construction materials management. Overall, there are five processes involved within the materials management, namely planning, procurement, logistics, handling, stock and waste control processes. Studies have shown that the use of ICT in managing the materials on site has not fully utilised by many construction firms despite of the potential benefits. This is due to some barriers faced by the construction firms in adopting the ICT. This research was carried out to investigate the adoption of ICT among the construction firms in Sarawak at the different process of materials management as well as to determine the requirements needed to increase the usage of ICT in material management. Qualitative approach has been chosen to conduct the research where face-to-face semi-structure interviews was carried out among ten selected construction firms registered with CIDB. Content analysis was done to analyse the transcribed interviews to determine the themes. The findings showed that there were high numbers of common ICT tools involved at the planning and procurement stage of materials management processes while handling and waste and stock control stage have the lowest adoption of ICT tools. It was also found that modern tracking technologies such as RFID and bar coding system used in developed countries has not been utilized and can be considered as non-existence in construction firms' materials management. This was due to the high investments required to purchase the ICT tools such as the hardware, staffs training as well as qualified ICT specialist for specific software knowledge and technology testing of automation or wireless technologies.