ELECTRONIC INFORMATION EXCHANGE IN BUILDING PRACTICE
Peter
Vice Member EDICON and
CITE, United Kingdom
- SUMMARY
- INTRODUCTION
- LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE: IN CONSTRUCTION
- LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE: JUST-IN-TIME
- EDI - ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE
- Decision criteria
- Applications areas: suppliers
- Applications areas: tendering
- E-mail: lessons to be learnt
- DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY
- Advantages
- Barriers
- Initiatives
- OBJECT TECHNOLOGY
- RESEARCH - WHAT IS REQUIRED
- A dilemma
- ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS TO ASK
- Who is it that could monitor these developments?
- Who can change the industry's practices?
- Internet?
-
INTRODUCTION
Many outside of construction fail to recognize the complexity of the industry. Its scope is very broad; at one end of the industry there are high profile buildings and structures that are sometimes tagged "modern wonders of the world". In another part of the industry there are conventional buildings - offices, factories, shopping arcades, schools; we pass these every day of the week, and every day of the week we drive on or over highways and bridges - perhaps complaining about the inconvenience they cause, at the same time wondering at the way an apparently random set of operations can be brought together to produce such impressive products. Other parts of the industry are represented by house building and the refurbishment of existing structures, where the owner requires to change the purpose or appearance of the premises.
In order to appreciate the construction industry fully, it is also necessary to recognize that it is fragmented - on both a trade and geographical basis - yet the scale of its business operations is considerable (in the UK it accounts for 10% of the Gross Domestic Product). It is a highly complex and very competitive industry, demanding highly skilled work to be conducted in all weathers, while producing mainly one-off products with one-off teams.
Little wonder that suppliers of services - particularly Information Technology services - see the industry as a good target for their products, particularly as, even today, the general perception is that the industry is 'behind the times' in terms of technology.
Information Technology (IT) undoubtedly has had a role to play in construction for many years; indeed, in areas like Computer Aided Design (CAD), the construction industry has shown other industries the way. Unfortunately progress in IT and progress in construction are not synchronized. As a result, the origins of many of the IT 'solutions' that are thrust at construction originate in other industries, so that the products of these 'solutions' emulate the other industry's processes. The implicit expectation seems to be that if construction 'got its act together' and changed its practices it too could use IT
In this paper I draw upon my experience of working with a number of industry groups, national and international, and from that vantage point look at the evolution of the electronic exchange of information, seeking to identify the factors which have a significant impact upon its adoption in the construction industry.
The term Electronic Information Exchange (EIE) is used here as an all embracing term, because it is necessary to address many associated issues of electronic exchange of information if one is to describe the construction industry's use of computers in this field properly. It should be noted, however, that it is unlikely that any of the technologies being used in construction are unique to the construction industry; on the other hand, it seems to be more a case of the nature of the industry making unusual demands upon the technology.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE: IN CONSTRUCTION
Early examples of EIE include design offices sending copies of two-dimensional project-specific drawings to other parties involved in the same project; the project drawings themselves would probably have been produced by draftsmen re-trained to use CAD systems. Since it was recognized that at key points in the design process it would be necessary to pass copies of these drawings to other parties, it did not take the design offices long to recognize the advantage of sending a copy of the CAD files rather than a paper copy.
It quickly became apparent that exchanging an electronic version of a drawing was nothing like sending a paper drawing. If the receiving party was to automatically regenerate the drawing, the basis assumptions used to compile the drawing in the first place had also to be known by the receiving party. What, one asked, would happen if the drawing as reproduced automatically at the other end did not conform to the conventions used by the sender design office? This sort of thinking began to point up the difference between working within a single office and sharing documents with other parties on a project. Without some conventions for the project, it was difficult for the sending and receiving parties to make sense of each others drawings. Consequently, standardization of CAD layering and of drawing rules became necessary. The resulting conventions paved the way for CAD drawing exchange but proved to be far more complex than was originally imagined.
There is, for example, an infamous case where a receiving party, having loaded the files, was unable to see any of the drawing being exchanged. It transpired that in their office, all dimensions were in meters whereas the drawing sent to them was in millimeters; though the drawing was there in the receiver's CAD files, when presented (in a different scale), it turned out to be completely un-viewable!
The advent of improved instrumentation, data capture and remote communication connections (even taking advantage of early satellite communications) opened up another area of EIE. The transmission of monitoring and survey readings from remote site locations to a central laboratory or design office soon became an established process. A survey engineer could make visits to the location of a new site and conduct his surveys using electronic equipment incorporating data capture devices. The results of the survey would be transmitted back to a central office and the data used to interface with the computerized construction drawings. In this way, digital views of land profiles, site surveys etc. could be generated - often before the survey team returned to the office. As it was required to incorporate this survey material with the detailed drawings of the project produced via CAD systems, once again rules and conventions had to be established so that all contributors to the project were providing useable and understandable and exchangeable material.
The use of instrumentation and monitoring equipment has now reached a point where the equipment is often incorporated in the fabric of a structure or its surroundings. This strategically placed equipment routinely captures information and in response to remote electronic signals, transmits the stored information to a central point for analysis, often without human intervention.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE: JUST-IN-TIME
Besides these rather industry-specific examples, there are a host of other, rather routine practices, which in truth, form the major part of the industry's use of EIE.
A construction contract does not lend itself to carrying large stocks of goods and material; it operates on having what it needs, delivered "just-in-time" (JIT). This means that the routine dialogue between a buyer and a supplier can become crucial. It is fair to say that the telephone and the fax machine have already made a major contribution in this area.
However, let us consider all of the steps in a construction-based JIT buying process. For many construction projects, the identification and procurement schedules have been established not by the site but by a remotely based regional buying operation. The regional buyer has pre-arranged a procurement agreement with a local branch of the selected supplier; subsequently, the role for the construction site personnel is to "call off" the materials, as and when needed, against this pre-established buying schedule.
The flow of conventional paperwork to support this operation is complicated:
- The site is provided with details of the predetermined material, the identity of the local supplier to be used and the pre-arranged price for the goods.
- When the site makes a "call off", it is often by a telephone call or a locally raised paper order.
- The merchant supplies the goods accompanied by a delivery ticket.
These transactions take place between the local site and local branch of the supplier. Any subsequent discussion regarding over- or under-delivery, damaged goods or the like, also take place between the local personnel. Somewhere amongst this process, the site personnel will provide a signature to confirm receipt of the goods. The supplier's successful sale and delivery is the trigger for a payment request to be raised. Most supplier's will consolidate information from their local branches to a central point and process a central payment run. So then we have a central point of the supplier's operation sending out invoices to the contractor's accounts department; rarely is this accounts department site-based.
All that remains in the process now is the matching of the invoice received in the accounts office, (most likely for a part delivery), with the paper work raised by the local procurement office for material that was delivered to the site. The accounts staff knows about the invoice, the local procurement personnel knows of the intention to buy and the agreed prices, whilst the site know what it ordered, how many were delivered and when. This is known as the three-way match - invoice, order and delivery ticket - each has its origins in different geographical locations. It is easy to understand that it is in this area that many believe that technology can provide a solution.
EDI - ELECTRONIC DATA INTERCHANGE
EDI is the electronic transfer of business information from one independent computer system to another, using agreed standards to structure the data, regardless of the computer applications being used at each end. It is seen by many to be the solution to problems such as the site-based buying example given above, particularly since EDI is used by many other industries for just this sort of trading process and all of the necessary EDI standards exist. In addition, there are "store and forward" value-added network services to provide this service.
One of the essential criteria for deciding where to use EDI is the volume of transactions and the repetitive nature of the business.
To establish EDI facilities, one would wish to use them on high volume transactions and with the third parties with whom one frequently does business. Unfortunately, the complex processes described in detail in the example above rarely match this criterion. The high volume transactions on a site are not for the more significant material items like concrete and steel, but for what are referred to as "consumables" - tools, protective clothing, road cones and the like. In essence the repeat, volume transactions apply to low value consumable items, whereas the high cost items generate a relatively low number of transactions. A further factor is that it is common practice to use different suppliers across a range of projects so the prospect of setting up a technology solution with one or two selected suppliers is rarely supported.
In many companies, these low value consumable items are ordered direct by sites without there being a formal purchase order to refer back to. The quality of information recorded on these locally generated orders is notoriously unreliable, yet this same information would be needed to control the EDI-exchanged data between and within the two businesses involved in the transaction. Because of its unreliability, getting the individual EDI transactions to the right places in the businesses and for it to be used for matching purposes actually generates more administration than it solves. It requires some serious work to be done to radically change the operating procedures that allow the unreliable information to be generated in the first place.
There are, as a matter of fact, some examples of this type of electronic exchange working successfully but it is not wide spread nor would it appear likely to become so until there can be some significant shift in the procurement processes used between contractors and suppliers. The point of this example is to highlight that introducing EDI is not just a question of applying a technological solution; it requires changes to business practice too - and not just within individual companies.
The picture for EDI is not all negative, however. Many of the suppliers to the construction industry have recognized, and are benefiting from, the potential for EDI. They have EDI links established (and working) between themselves and the companies that supply them - the manufacturers. Here, the product range is relatively straight forward, the network of locations is reasonably static and there is ample opportunity to manage the quality of the information being processed. Consequently, there are many examples of EDI working successfully in these areas. Indeed, this leads to a situation where suppliers are already EDI equipped and well aware of the benefits to be derived; they are waiting for contractors to 'get themselves organized'.
One of the traditional aspects of the construction process is that of competitive tendering. This is a process that companies have to use to secure work in competition with other companies. The Bill of Quantities (BoQ) is the traditional documentation used as the basis for pricing and communicating the tender, also to measure the work content of the job. For many projects, this is a very large document, since it breaks the work content of a contract down into well-defined and pre-prescribed components of work.
Companies wishing to tender for a contract are required to assign prices to each of the items of the work described in this document. Many of these companies have invested heavily in IT tools to aid this process. At one end of the process, the organization supplying this document may well have developed various methods to deliver the information in an electronic form, in some cases encouraging the use of their IT solutions by also providing a self-loading computer program to read and accept prices keyed in as the material is viewed. From the originator's point of view, this is a method of ensuring that the material provided is returned in the original format with only the prices added.
This approach provides the originator with what is wanted but ignores the fact that the organization pricing the job may well have had some requirements too. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the companies that have to earn their living by accurate tending have installed their own tendering or estimating software applications. These applications take advantage of the well-structured information provided within a BoQ in order to decompose each item into a bill of materials breakdown for each work item. A lot of advantage to the companies is gained from being able:
- to minimize the time taken to input the material from the BoQ into their own estimating software applications,
- to automate and provide accurate base line pricing material for consideration by the estimating experts,
- to streamline the process of obtaining prices from third party participants like subcontractors and suppliers
- to supply the final pricing information integrated into the original BoQ for return to the client.
Since the time available for responding to tenders is usually very limited, if it is possible to minimize the time taken to deal with these points, more time is available to polish the pricing of the key items within the job, leading to a more accurate tender price for the contract.
This has naturally become an area of interest for EIE. Solutions exist that are based upon word processed files, with different file formats being made available in recognition of the variety of word processing products in use. Another solution is to provide the data in the form of an ASCII file, usually accompanied by a set of instructions describing the format of the file for the contract. This in turn leads to a plethora of interface tools that bridge the gap between the receiving estimating system and the ASCII file forms. However, EDI standards have now been developed for most of the processes that the BoQ material is used for. These have given rise to a set of standards in which an increasing number of parties involved in the tendering process and the creation of BoQ material are involved.
Other technology solutions have been adopted, including the use of document scanners. The idea here is that the individual pages of a paper BoQ are scanned in and represented upon the computer screen. The document management software is fed the position of key fields on the pages and Optical Character Recognition software is used to translate these into data that is used to drive the estimating system. The prices resulting from the estimating software is added to the scanned images in the appropriate position and used either as a file of scanned images or as a print-out as the tender submission.
There is (or should be) some real motivation to succeed in this area because - beyond the processes explained so far - the successful construction company would be able to utilize the same electronic BoQ material through out the life of the contract, such as:
- submitting and getting approval to routine valuations and payment stages,
- replaying the same pricing and estimating processes between the contractor and the suppliers and subcontractors as they tender for their participation in the contract (a process that is carried out through out the duration of the contract).
In other words, this really is one of the areas of the construction process that stands to gain a lot from EIE, with the potential to deliver advantages throughout the life of the contract to all parties that are involved in the contract. Given this potential, it is disappointing to report that progress in this area is poor. The reasons for this will be reviewed later in this paper.
Figure 1. The project information cycle.
There has been something of a revolution regarding E-mail within construction. Many of the main players use E-mail to assist them in communicating within their own businesses. What is more, they are beginning to accept it as a reasonable form to communicate with each other on contract related issues. It is too soon to say that it is trusted and depended upon as the sole method of exchanging important information; however there are an increasing number of examples where parties are using E-mail to correspond on contract issues (mostly text based, like site instructions).
These examples should be seen as very significant, since it is tantamount to breaking new ground in the construction field, and it provides real examples where businesses in a commercial environment are accepting the concept of exchanging information electronically. The inevitable questions are being raised:
- about how the procedures are controlled,
- about what the responsibilities and legal positions are,
- and about the issue of electronic signatures.
Equally important, the use of E-mail has begun to demonstrate the value of establishing some operating rules and agreeing on some specific contract conventions. Problems with early attempts to exchange E-mail-attached files, produced from various desktop tools, highlighted this issue. Interestingly, the reaction when this became apparent was "[...] well why do they not co-exist? We expect them to, surely the tools do not work properly if they do not co-exist! "
This reaction is easy to understand. In construction, we know about standards, we know about buying components and putting them together to produce a composite, indeed, we expect standards to be there. Because we expect them to be there, there is little tolerance when they are not, and certainly no sympathy with the concept that we should have to fund and deliver the standards for ourselves; instead, the standards have to be there for the tools to work!
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY
Picking up on the theme of individual projects and the need for multiple organizations to exchange information electronically brings us to the subject of Document Management Technology.
Many major projects are now using Document Management Technology to provide the collection and distribution mechanisms for information exchanged within the contract. The term 'Document' of course in this context is an electronic document which can include text information, drawings, audio and video material, scanned images and so on. This is an area where electronic material about a contract is collated and distributed between the various parties involved in the contract.
Local networks and servers are being established for the contract, and remote connections allow for those who are not on site to participate. People are now being employed on the contract as information managers to operate the hub of this service and to ensure the integrity of the information. The contract itself may even have all parties agreeing upon a coding and referencing convention for the contract. Staff on the site may actually be taking the paper documents that it receives and routinely scanning them so that an electronic image is available in the database. Even the substantial and never-ending process of distributing drawings is being achieved electronically, where workflow technology is providing the management of the approval and change management processes. In other words, there now exists ample opportunity for IT to support the business of information management.
There is an increasing interest and awareness of the need to adopt Document Management Technology. However, when computing begins to clash with the traditional operational procedures and attitudes of the industry, it tends to be the traditional approaches that win the day. As in all industries, there are new generations of computer-aware managers who expect to use computing as a matter of course; and indeed they do. The inducement to utilize computing and other technologies is promoted in much of the industry's recent training material, giving rise to an expectation amongst today's managers that a new approach is not only available but is desirable.
All too often the practical environment within which the contract manager is operating provides a different story. In making a case to adopt a serious computing solution into the operation of his contract, a contract manager knows he has to overcome issues like:
- resistance from some of the parties involved in the contract,
- it is not ultimately his decision, he will have to get the support of management and the key parties in the contract,
- too little funding provision has been made available at the start of the job,
- there is caution about sharing information and questions about the ownership of that information can lead to parties not wanting to release information,
- people will insist on a paper copy with a signature on it,
- even questions about the legitimacy of exchanging electronically will be raised.
There are, however, reasons to be encouraged. The recession that all construction businesses have been through during the early 90's has demanded they hone their operations, prompting considerable change that a few years before would have been unthinkable. Businesses are now positively seeking more value out the information used to run a contract:
- they appreciate the need to consider the entire life cycle of a contract, rather than just the construction phase,
- they find themselves expected to enter into partnering agreements with other organizations so that the business practice of all operations is more closely aligned,
- they are expected to establish closer relationships with the Client, not just to win the work but to facilitate many of the downstream operations too, (in some cases, even finding that the client is stipulating how aspects of the contract should be run).
There are many in the industry that welcome these moves and who have thrown themselves enthusiastically behind achieving these goals. For some it is just the opportunity they have been awaiting as it should open doors that were previously closed. For others it has provided a fertile ground for research and development. Yet to some it is a threat and a break with tradition.
If there is one thing that the construction industry is not short of, it is bodies that provide forums for discussion about industry-related issues. It has to be said that this is potentially one of the factors holding back the industry's adoption of technology, since it is so difficult to secure the support of all the necessary parties to carry through changes to the established industry processes and rules of operation.
However, all of these bodies are alive to the potential of technology; indeed many of them have special interest groups and working parties to monitor the technology arena. Unfortunately these tend to operate in isolation from each other, so there is little scope for concerted actions to aid the industry. But there are examples of cross industry groups working to further the adoption of EIE, and it is pleasing to report that these cross industry working groups include significant contributions from the client base.
In the area of EDI, for example, study groups have progressively designed and built exchange standards for a considerable number of the traditional business processes. An early lesson for these groups was that other industries have built EDI standards for routine business processes and that many of these are equally suitable for construction. A further realization is that contractors conduct as much business outside of construction as within, therefore any trading exchange standards should be capable of working across industry boundaries. Consequently much of these groups' activities are aligned with international and cross-industry standards.
As well as developing standards, some of these groups actively promote the implementation and practical use of EDI between potential trading partners. This work is beginning to bear fruit but it is difficult. It is clear that the technology is not an inhibitor - since the responsible groups have become very proficient at developing and evolving practical standards where none existed. Rather, it is the business interests and preparedness that is the inhibitor, even though the costs involved are relatively low and the pay-back significant, even for the smaller players. The aim of the EDI groups is to help create the critical mass of companies necessary to make trading electronically an acceptable and normal practice.
Another ingredient has to be addressed, namely that of support from the industry rule-makers. Unless the industry establishment sanctions the use of electronic exchange and embodies it as an acceptable practice in the rules of operation, there will continue to be a slow and cautious take up of the technique.
Another area where cross industry groups are currently active is in developing the industry's use of Object Technology. This is a technology that has caught the imagination of the industry, since it offers real opportunities to move the industry's current use of information technology to a different level. Work is progressing (nationally and internationally) to identify the requirements and to represent these within the commercial products such as CAD systems. When available, the results of this work will enable the graphical model of the contract to provide a new dimension to the material used to describe and inform within the contract; it can become the principle mechanism for representing the building, providing a graphical view of the building through all stages. By becoming the basis for storing information about the building - rather like the document management tools are at present, it will revolutionize the way people work and make reference to contract documentation in the future.
The Object standards, once they become available, will provide an interfacing convention which, if accepted as an industry standard and incorporated in the software products, will mean that the plethora of third parties that come together on a given contract can all interface on the contract, regardless of the software products used.
The intention with this technology is that the 3D models developed for the contract should be used throughout the construction process, becoming an "as built" model of the output of the contract. This model will be updated during its life with information about all of the material and equipment used, making it an ideal model for the Client to use during the occupation of the building. As a result, the client has a model of the building he is to occupy and one that he can use for facilities' management throughout the life of the building. The model should also be of value when it is required to demolish the building.
It should be pointed out that many of the people that are contributing to the cross industry research and applications activities described above, do so as part of their normal work. They are aware of the advantages and contribute as much of their time as possible, and very few of them have this as a full time commitment.
Alongside these cross industry activities, there are research projects that cover a wide range of issues related to IT in construction. This research work typically involves professional researchers, members of academia and developers of IT services and solutions, who are able to put much more of their time into their work; their work makes a key contribution to taking the industry forward regarding the use of IT.
The projects appear to have one or two features in common:
- they are built around a selected piece of IT technology with the aim of showing how this technology could benefit the industry,
- their aim is either to deliver a solution that can be packaged as a commercial offering to the industry, or the end product of the study is to produce a set of findings published in the form of a report.
There is, of course, the risk that neither of these approaches really addresses the construction practitioner's requirements. The construction manager's requirements are for technology solutions that can be deployed quickly and easily - there is often little time from the point of winning the contract to beginning work. Besides, technology solutions typically work much better if they have been implemented at the commencement of the contract not "bolted on" once the contract has started. There is no substitute for real construction experience. Because a credible sponsor is needed, the research teams seek the practical involvement of representatives from the industry
Another requirement from the construction manager is for solutions that can co-exist with existing practices. We have already mentioned the difficulties of changing the culture of the work environment; if a solution is to be implemented quickly and easily, it will be better achieved if the solution in question can be applied in the existing methods of working. For the construction manager to be able to accept such solutions, he will wish to recognize the potential value for money. He is not interested in long-term or intangible benefits; he wants the payback realized on his contract, not somebody else's. As the technology tools rarely already exist, the cost-benefit has also to carry the capital cost of the equipment needed. And of course (because we would not be doing our job if we did not), there is the need to re-engineer the affected business processes.
In contrast, the technicians, who are seeking to provide IT solutions, have an interest in seeing that the solution is integrated with all appropriate aspects of the business operation. They are also concerned that a careful analysis of the existing method of working be undertaken.
In summary, businesses need well-focused solutions to come out of research, that are practical to implement; there is little interest and support for an initiative that does not deliver a tangible product - a report is not considered a product!
The research projects that are aligned to individual construction contracts and which have the active support of a construction manager, are closely targeted to the construction manager's range of requirements. Hence, they are narrow in their objectives, neither too technical nor revolutionary in terms of the re-engineering of business practices they imply. Words like 'pragmatic' and 'well focused' are used to describe them.
The other, more generic, type of research projects will appear to carry the support of big companies - but, in reality, the participation from the company may well come from the IT department or from some other service part of the business. This implies that the outlook is more radical, with an interest (i) in wanting to get the extra value, (ii) in wanting to have a well analyzed solution, and (iii) in bringing about changes to the way the business operates in the future. The idea of payback through a single contract is probably sacrificed.
Both approaches, of course, have their justification; the first provides more immediate gains, whereas the second calls for more investment in changing the way work is carried out. Unfortunately, the present day industry climate is not able to sustain the second way of working.
The consequences are that quick-win projects are beginning to make an impact upon the industry. Technology solutions are being introduced - slowly and piecemeal, and there is little interest or awareness of the need to consider consistency across and between these solutions. In cases where the solution requires something like a set of rules or some coding conventions, there is no overview being taken to see that the rules and codes for one solution could be utilized elsewhere in the business. Nor is any care being taken to ensure that industry standards and conventions become integrated as the technology is installed. It is to be feared that by not looking across applications, one will end up with technology mis-matches! This should be a major concern for those who have the best interest of the industry at heart.
Who is it that could monitor these developments?
One approach to answering this question is through the research funding bodies who should accept a responsibility to avoid dispersing interest and energy by ensuring that the work that they are supporting is well-considered and well coordinated. This coordination should not be on a contract-by-contract basis but prevail across their whole program of funded research. In addition, it would be better still if the coordination was applied in accordance with an industry-wide consideration of the research's objectives and impacts, not solely from a technology viewpoint.
Who can change the industry's practices?
A second approach that can assist in improving the situation lies with the industry's rule makers, those that can and do influence the operation of the industry. The construction industry is governed by rules and practices that have been established over many years; against this background, the nature of today's IT solutions, particularly those related to communication and integration, are that they introduce alternative ways in which the industry can operate. Without the industry's rules and conventions being changed to complement these new solutions, there is considerable caution and in some cases resistance, regarding accepting the improvements.
With the active participation of the industry rule makers, a stronger industry rather than technology focus be taken by the funding bodies, with a consequent shift to achieve "open" solutions rather than the "parochial" solutions currently taken by both the industry and technicians. In this way, the task of helping the widely diverse construction industry to take substantial advantage of developments in IT will be much better channeled.
Many of today's research projects hinge on the prolific technology of the Internet. However, the highly fluid nature of this technology is in itself a cause for concern. It is already possible to see research projects "losing their way" because the technology has outstripped the contract environment, so that selecting which proposed projects to contribute to is very difficult. Indeed, it is made even more difficult since the nature of the Internet technology is to a large degree against the philosophy of the industry's current modus operandi.
Note that this has been true for a number of other industries too; somehow, though, these other industries have managed to overcome this barrier and are now embracing the Internet technology within their operations. However, the construction industry's attitudes and cautions regarding EIE apply equally to the Internet (and possibly even more so). There is a fundamental cultural difference between the open, all-pervading Internet concept and the closer, more tightly-controlled one adopted in construction contracts.
Until the issues described here are fully addressed, the potential available from the newest technologies will not be achieved.
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