Use of ICT to improve quality, whole life costs and communications

More consideration should be given to the relationship between quality and the proportion of costs spent during the phases of the life of a facility. The level of quality and environmental design must be considered by all stakeholders involved in the construction, operation and maintenance of a facility. The objective of this paper is to show the relationship between quality and whole life costs and how the increasing level of information technology activities in the construction industry will help improve collaboration, communications and decision making. The link between quality and the life phases of a constructed facility will be shown. The increased level of business activities in Architectural, Engineering and Construction projects will mean that the amount of interactive collaboration to support multidiscipline decision making in connection with quality, whole life costs, and environmental design should significantly improve. To foster more effective means of communicating information, capturing data electronically, and hence improving the decision making process, an Interactive Collaboration Laboratory has been established by the Construction Engineering and Management group at the University of New Brunswick.