IT APPLICATION - MALAYSIAN CONTRACTORS AND DEVELOPERS

To my best knowledge and based on my real life working experiences in various organizations beginning with contractor, property developer, short stint with UK construction company and now with MNC PMC (it is not too many actually for a period of almost 19 years, because i am not job hoper), there are not many construction companies or developers in Malaysia that have really implemented and leveraged on IT in big scale for their construction businesses and operations other than normal and standard office IT applications. Nevertheless, there are few that have managed to do that in big scale, however the extent of its successfulness is not fully known. The following are the "big" companies that we can check whether they have successfully leveraged on IT;

Ahmad Zaki Resources
WCT Engineering
IJM Berhad
Gamuda Berhad
WTW Bovis Sdn. Bhd. (my company, PMC and D&B Contractor which is heavily on IT)
Road Builder

MMC Engineering
MTD
YTL

We can also look at the project consultants or developers as follows;
JUBM
KPK
KLCC Projek
Putrajaya Holding

I believe that there are many out there, however our industry is slow to adopt the ICT technology in their business and operation. We have seen some"improvement" or "progress" in information technology and applications but still lack in communication sector. The way the people communicate in the construction industry especially at construction sites is still way behind compared to our counterparts in Europe and US. My project team used Video Conference (VC) way back (10 years ago while i was working on my UK projects - Bluewater (the biggest indoor shopping complex in Europe)) to communicate with head office in Australia and carry out discussion and progress reporting. In addition, the construction site was installed with few CCTV at the strategic locations which transmitted the video images in real time directly to the head office in Australia, so the bosses could see the construction activities like they were there and also whoever that did not do their works!!! Authority submissions were done electronically as well as the information sharing and distribution among the construction team members and sub-contractors. Can you imagine construction project which do not have hard copy drawings in the site office, yes this project did not have hard copy drawing... all the drawings were prepared, reviewed, commented, submitted and issued electronically not only between the consultants but also the suppliers and contractors... Bear in mind, this was done more than 10 years ago in UK.. but here, i don't think we are any where near to that even there were some attempts which had resulted failures, the reasons can be one of our research study!!!

You can visit HERE to know more about the Bluewater project. The photo below shows the actual construction site where i spent my time there for almost 2 years (1996 - 1998).

If you want to see how the completed Bluewater shopping complex looks alike, click the youtube video below.. it is shoppers heaven!!!



Bluewater Indoor Shopping Complex, Dartford, Kent United Kingdom

With the current ICT trend, low cost coupled with globallisation concept, there are local companies that are operating overseas i.e. Middle East that might be using this communication tool extensively.

For those that are looking for company for IT case study can look at the companies mentioned above.