Shifting the construction interoperability paradigm, in the advent of Service Oriented and Model Driven Architectures

Abstract

A major difficulty construction companies are currently facing is the lack of interoperability of software appli-cations to manage and progress in their business. Organizations are being pressured up by new business rela-tionships, driven for instance by new contractual challenges, which the exchange of information and documents with new partners are often incapable of being executed automatically and in electronic format. This is princi-pally due to problems of incompatibility with the information representation adopted by the software applica-tions they are working with. This problem arises not only during the project phase but also across the whole life cycle that includes operation and maintenance stages. In order to create the enabling conditions for the de-ployment of the electronic collaborative and commerce platforms it is fundamental to understand the variables that may influence its development, and how they determine the configuration of the e-platform. This paper, af-ter present technology driven standards for the construction industry data management, it proposes the adop-tion of the emerging Service Oriented and Model Driven Architectures to shift forward the interoperability paradigm in this industrial sector. The paper illustrates some scenarios where significant impact is expected when adopting the proposed methodology.