Major building projects involve a lot of players and a lot of information. Architects, civil engineers, construction companies and a large number of specialist sub-contractors have to work together to transform the initial design into bricks and mortar. Progress reports and questions about designs or specifications are normally sent by post, courier or fax. More urgent problems have to be resolved by phone calls. There is enormous potential for using Information and Communications Technology to speed up the critical day-to-day decisions that will keep the project on time and within budget.

The ACTS project CICC developed a document retrieval system for use by a building contractor and its subcontractors. This was tested under operational conditions in a major construction project, the Bluewater Retail Park on the south eastern outskirts of London. About 150 separate companies spread over 60 sites were involved in the trial and the system was used as a main working tool rather than as an experimental secondary system.

The terminals were commercially available PCs running standard document retrieval and e-mail software and connected by leased lines or ISDN. The trial tested a range of multimedia communications and information sharing functions under real-life conditions. After basic PC training, staff from the many companies involved were able to use the system on a regular basis, working with electronic, up-to-date documents rather than paper documents. Users were led gently into major changes into their normal ways of working so the trial was not a test of new equipment but was an exercise in understanding how the technology could be used in a real working environment

The Bluewater trial demonstrated clearly to the construction industry that a large, diverse group of players could use a distributed/collaborative working environment under real-life conditions. The principal contractors on the Bluewater project estimated that the system saved them about £1M (about 1.5M ECU) in a £200M (about 300M ECU) project.

CICC also explored how more advanced tools based on virtual or augmented reality might be exploited by the construction industry. A 'People Information Finder' and a 3-D site model have been built and tested with BICC, Ove Arup and Europroject. Although the systems are at present too expensive for commercial use, they demonstrate what the next generation of ICT tools could do for the construction industry.

The project MICC looked at another aspect of the 'digital construction site' and demonstrated the potential of mobile communications for supporting the information flows needed to manage a major construction project.

Mobile communications were provided by a DECT network covering the construction site. This ensured that key personnel could be contacted at any time.

A compact and transportable 'communications container' was developed for linking the site's wired and wireless networks with public networks. The container included systems to manage these resources as a private communications network providing integrated voice and data communications for the many companies involved on the site. It also linked them to design and management teams elsewhere in their companies so that they had rapid access to any information needed for a particular decision.

Construction sites have traditionally behaved as a near independent business with closer links to their workforce and suppliers than to their headquarters. The projects have has demonstrated that Information and Communications Technology can provide them with effective new ways of working both on-site and with headquarters technical bureaux.