Content area
Abstract
This research pioneers, at least in the academic community, the development of an explicit and flexible business process model for a construction company, a modelling approach for the model, and an appropriate business process framework using the model. It is motivated by the need for business process improvement in construction companies and the idea of Business Process Management about establishing a framework by separating the business processes from the underlying applications and creating a flexible model with top-down and bottom-up redesigns.
With no proven models, approach and framework, the author investigates a large construction company in Hong Kong to collect real-life data, and tries different data collection and analysis methods. A representative company is selected to increase the generalizability in the findings. After four rounds of investigation into a tendering process, the three research objectives are attained. Firstly, an explicit and flexible reference model is developed. It explicitly captures the interdependencies of roles, key activities, activity sequence and information flow. Its process components ("P"), the value-based modules containing chains of activities constrained by the information for supplier, input, output and customer ("S-I-O-C"), can be flexibly reused in different contexts like Traditional tendering/Design & Build tendering. Secondly, a SONG modelling approach is established. A reusable, readable and accurate business process model can be generated by using (i) Grounded theory to collect and analyze data systematically, (ii) Narrative scenario to describe the existing practice accurately, (iii) O ntology to generate reusable process components with category grouping, and (iv) "S-I-P-O-C" to capture the aforementioned constraints. Finally, a Seven-step Framework is formulated. It allows the use of top-down (or goal-driven) and bottom-up (or problem-driven) analyses to identify the potential process redesigns comprehensively. Then, the business can drive IT development, and vice versa, to satisfy the different needs of the companies at different times.
The model, approach and framework developed could serve as reference templates and methodologies, shedding light on improving the business process, bridging the business-IT gap, integrating examples of existing application software, providing the process library/taxonomy for training employees and computing automation, and facilitating collaboration with partners in the construction industry.