ITcon Vol. 11, Special Issue e-Commerce in construction , pg. 161-173, http://www.itcon.org/2006/12

E-CONTRACTING FOR SMES THROUGH AN ENGINEERING E-HUB

SUBMITTED: July 2005
REVISED: January 2006
PUBLISHED: April 2006
EDITOR: Ruikar K

Zhaomin Ren, Senior Lecturer
School of Technology, Glamorgan University
email: zren@glam.ac.uk

Tarek M. Hassan, Senior Lecturer
Department of Civil and Building engineering, Loughborough University
email: t.hassan@lboro.ac.uk

Chris D. Carter, EU Research Project Manager
Department of Civil and Building engineering, Loughborough University
email: c.d.carter@lboro.ac.uk

Chimay J. Anumba, Professor
Department of Civil and Building engineering, Loughborough University
email: c.j.anumba@lboro.ac.uk

SUMMARY: This paper presents an e-engineering contracting system developed for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by the EU funded e-HUBs project (“e-Engineering enabled by Holonomic and Universal Broker Services”, IST-2001-34031). As a dedicated service within the Business to Business (B2B) arena, the engineering e-Hub is designed to facilitate the outsourcing of engineering services. The project developed a transparent, online collaborative project preparation and contracting workspace to enforce process and knowledge modelling, sharing and configuration, online contracting, and trust building. It lowers the major barriers that prevent SMEs from entering e-Business.

KEYWORDS: collaborative project planning, e-Hub, online contracting systems, SMEs

FULL TEXT: file.pdf (256,507 bytes)

CITATION:

Ren Z, Hassan T M, Carter C D and Anumba C J (2006) E-CONTRACTING FOR SMES THROUGH AN ENGINEERING E-HUB, ITcon Vol. 11, Special Issue e-Commerce in construction , pg. 161-173, http://www.itcon.org/2006/12