توسعه سیستم کنترل هزینه: یک رویکرد مشترک برای پیمانکاران (شرکتهای) کوچک و متوسط

Construction business comprises a number of small and medium-sized contractors which form the major part of the industry. The existing research on the new ICT development is creating very sophisticated and complex systems which are not yet applicable to this part of the construction industry. With regard to general limitations as design criteria, this research uses a collaborative approach to develop a cost control system for five selected small and-medium-sized contractors. The new efficient cost control system is adopted on the earned value concept and is developed using available ICT tools which are familiar and easy-to-learn. A collaborative approach can ensure the diffusion of technology to these companies.

Construction is a very competitive business mainly by prices. To maintain success, contractors have to continuously improve the efficiency of their business processes. Modern information and communication technology (ICT) holds promising advantages to improve the business processes of the construction industry particularly in the field of management. Many new system developments are being created in relation to research findings and they are getting more sophisticated with the current trend of integrating everything. Small and medium-sized companies with their limited resources and some other constraints are not ready to implement and obtain benefits from the technology. This paper reports the research project which aims to analyze the existing business processes of small and medium-sized construction companies (or construction SMEs) and identify priority area of improvement. It also aims to determine the methodology and to develop a new ICT system that can be successfully implemented on construction SMEs’ business. A collaborative approach is employed to overcome limitations on physical and psychological factors. The approach is emphasized on the company involvement throughout the development process. Finally, the cost control system is particularly developed for the collaborative construction SMEs. The system is adopted on the earned value concept and their existing documentation-based control.

The recent industry survey reports that small and medium-sized companies are the majority of the construction industry. This research has collaborated with five selected construction SMEs. It identified that general limitations on the new ICT adoption are related to both physical and psychological factors such as human resources, capital, management’s support and user’s acceptance. Therefore, a suitable ICT system development must require low investment, be easy to use and maintain, convince the management of its benefits, target on their highest priority problems, and be familiar to the prospective users. This research used a collaborative approach in the system development and implementation processes to increase the acceptance of the users and the managements. These companies were concerned about costs and needed a new effective cost control system. The earned value concept was adopted using the three principle terms namely the budgeted cost, the actual cost and the earned value. These three terms were simplified to suit the capabilities of the construction SMEs. The quantities of materials in the BOQ were used as the budgeted costs while the cumulative numbers of requisitioned materials were used as the actual costs, given that the unit-prices of materials were constant. The earned values were estimated by the contractor supervisors on construction sites. MS Access and XML were selected as suitable tools for this development. The functions of the developed system were adopted on their existing work routine and document forms to ensure that the users were able to learn rapidly. Although it is difficult to change paper-based work routines to electronic-based, the persistence of helps and encouragements and the use of the forms familiarity can ease the learning process of the users. The developed cost control system can successfully be implemented on the five collaborative companies. The system helps the contractors track the progresses of their different projects. It is anticipated that this cost control system with the collaborative approach can also improve the efficiency of the business process of other construction SMEs.