Creating intelligent enterprises in the Singapore construction industry to support a knowledge economy

Singapore, as a new economy, aspires to become the IT and business hub of Asia. The aim in the Infocomm 21 plan is to develop Singapore into a vibrant and dynamic global infocomm capital with a thriving e-economy and a pervasive and infocomm-savvy e-society. There is an on-going IT development programme for the construction industry known as the CORENET, which was started in 1993. Several industry projects have been implemented to help the construction-sector companies adopt IT. The IT Barometer 2003 survey is a timely check on the levels of general adoption of IT and specific adoption of IT originating from the CORENET. The response rate of the Singapore survey is 11.1% based on 84 returns from a total of 754 questionnaires mailed out. The key findings on IT adoption are summarised and the potential for construction-sector companies to be intelligent enterprises is evaluated. The outcome of the assessment culminates in six directions for the construction industry in Singapore, as well as worldwide, intending to create intelligent enterprises. They are: (1) to tap the advanced telecommunications infrastructure; (2) to operate within a well-established legal and regulatory framework for electronic transactions; (3) to implement ERP systems for integration of databases and applications; (4) to build business intelligence capabilities and plan investments in information systems; (5) to practise business process re-engineering; and (6) for the SMEs, to focus on people, their IT needs and ability to manage change.