Raising Awareness of Local Building Products by Means of the World Wide Web

Mary Shapcott, School of Information and Software Engineering, University of Ulster, Co. Antrim, Ireland. Phone +44 1232 368886 Email: cm.shapcott@ulst.ac.uk Home Page: Mary Shapcott [HREF 1]

Introduction

In Ireland as elsewhere, the construction industry relies heavily on the craft skills of tradesmen. Construction projects are usually one-off and complex. Consequently the industry has been slow to benefit from developments in information technology. There are many small firms providing specialised services or products for whom the extensive use of computing has simply not been justified. The heavy investment in capital and management resources needed has prevented them from benefiting from automation. Firms have used specific technologies such as fax machines and word processors, in order to speed office procedures, but they have been slow to automate their manual activities. Very few have integrated information systems.

In contrast to the construction industry, the Irish software industry ranks fifth in the world in terms of software production. The recent strong growth of the Irish economy is partly due to the rapid expansion of this industry. Part of the success of the software industry is undoubtedly due to Irelands position of having an educated, English-speaking workforce which can give US companies a presence in Europe. Part of it is also due to developments in communications technology which have given local companies the opportunity to compete in world markets. The World Wide Web gives other small players this capability. For example, guest-house and bed-and-breakfast owners in the UK and Ireland can choose to be listed in Stilwell's on-line guide (1996) [HREF 2] in which potential guests search for a room in a town of their choice. A family-run firm can sell hand-made cricket bats around the world (Gibbs 1996).

The Web gives small companies the opportunity of hooking in to a virtual world of information storage and processing. They need not spend huge amounts of money, nor does it mean wholesale redesign of their business. When they do invest in technology they can be reasonably sure that they will be keeping in step with the rest of the world.

Large companies are already aware of the potential of the Web. In a survey by Barclay's Bank (1996) of the top one thousand UK businesses eighty-one per cent saw it as a business opportunity and nearly forty per cent already had an on-line site of some description. Businesses viewed the Web as most useful for electronic trading with other companies, for selling goods direct and for advertising. However, they were concerned about possible security weaknesses, and that employees might waste company time surfing the Net. These large companies were worried about increased competition. It is clear that if a potential customer can locate a small company as quickly as a large company by using the Net, many of the advantages of large advertising budgets may be lost.

In any locality there are likely to be many small firms serving a local market with generally, but not always, low technology or bulky products. They may provide services which involve personal visits. If such companies can make potential customers aware of their products then they can compete successfully with larger companies.

In the remainder of this paper we describe how this can be done using the Web. In section two we report on the results of a survey into the marketing requirements of the construction industry. In section three we briefly describe the construction industry in Northern Ireland. In sections four and five we outline the proposed Web-based Construction Products Service.

Building Industry User Requirements

Architects make a good deal of use of building component manufacturers' literature and need a reliable method for storing and retrieving it. A survey by Hendry, McDonagh and Catháin (1991) of recent specification practice of local products by 38 architectural practices was used as a basis for assessing the product information storage requirements of the industry.

This survey found that a minority engaged a part-time librarian for the purpose of organising the information held in their offices. In half the offices surveyed this task was the responsibility of a member of the full-time staff.

As regards the system used for storing and organising this information one third of the practices used the Barbour Index system. This is a proprietary system which does not allow the user to file other material into the system. Two thirds of the respondents used the CI/SfB classification system. One quarter used the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Product Data volumes. Most employed more than one system. A significant minority stored material alphabetically by manufacturer, or product. In addition to the practice's centrally held collection, it was found that individuals often had small personal collections of books, journals, trade literature and technical reference works.

The main sources of information for those surveyed were manufacturers' catalogues, the office library, professional colleagues and manufacturers' trade representatives. Journals were also a source of information, or at least a means of making the architect aware that a particular product or manufacturer existed.

Of the systems mentioned above it should be noted that the Barbour and RIBA are national, subscription services. Thus they involve both end user and manufacturer in costs. The CI/SfB is an internationally used public domain filing system. Of course there are also costs associated with this, since time must be spent organising the material. Other more high-tech information systems have emerged since the above survey was done. RIBACAD supplies specification and construction details on floppy discs, for example. The situation is quite volatile at present. There is a growing number of on-line or CD-based commercial services which in addition to manufacturers' information also provide other material such as British Standards and Codes of Practice. These are used for specification writing as well as during the design process. In theory, on-line services are more up to date, so a subscriber can be sure of downloading the latest technical information or construction detail.

Most manufacturers provide the CI/SfB code on the front of their brochures. There is a British Standard for the layout which includes the box for the CI/SfB code close to the top right hand corner. While small local manufacturers are not inclined to buy space in the national systems due to the cost involved, it is very easy for them to provide the CI/SfB code thus ensuring appropriate shelving of their literature - provided it has got through to the person who wants it. Their marketing task is to place their trade literature with specifiers who are likely to use their product. In order for a manufacturer to have his product specified by architects:

This last point is quite important. Architects can reduce their liability by specifying products whose quality and fitness for purpose are independently certified.

In parallel with the survey mentioned above a database of building products manufactured in Northern Ireland, together with their respective manufacturers, was assembled. It was envisaged that this would be used mainly by architects or others involved in specifying building materials. It has become clear that there is a larger constituency which might make use of such a facility. The practice of post-contract substitution of alternative products or materials means that such a database would be of considerable use to contractors as well.

The local building industry in Northern Ireland

Architects who took part in the above survey were asked to draw up a list of local products specified in the last project completed by their practice. They were also asked to say what locally manufactured products they had specified over the previous five years. Analysis of the responses shows that at least half of the respondents had specified the following products during the previous five years:

There is a tendency for the above materials to be either heavy, like bricks, steel and concrete, or else bulky like kitchen units, doors and windows. It stands to reason that such products would be locally produced since transport costs must in general increase with distance. The survey paints a picture of a low-tech extraction-oriented industry, a not inaccurate portrait, though it is a great over-generalisation.

However it is not as simple as this because markets are not perfect. The survey revealed that there is a longer list of less frequently specified products such as insulation, security systems, curtain walling, heating equipment and water tanks which are manufactured locally and which are presumably able to compete in wider markets. There is considerable scope for small manufacturers to increase market share by developing new products based on their existing technology and skill bases, for example specialist concrete precasting or cladding panels. They have the advantage of flexibility and the fact that it is generally relatively easy to carve out a small part of the market share of a very large competitor. It was significant that one very large company was not interested in the above project because they saw that it would have the effect of reducing their existing share of the market.

Features of the Products Service

At present the database contains just under one thousand firms and about 3,500 product descriptions. It will be brought up to date by means of a mailshot and then transferred to a new Web server. It will be an electronic catalogue of suppliers of building products. Construction product manufacturers will provide cataloguing information. A central agency will maintain the catalogue, and architects and others will be the end-users who will read it.

Manufacturers will subscribe to the service, paying a small fee for administration costs. These costs will be kept low because each supplier will have the responsibility of maintaining his/her own Web pages. These pages will contain a list of products marketed by the supplier. It will be relatively easy to keep the information up-to-date. The supplier will fill in a form on the Web when adding a new product. To modify an existing product the supplier will simply edit an existing on-line form and the system will update the relevant Web page automatically.

To end users of the system the service will look like an electronic catalogue. The user will be able to access the contents in several ways. The catalogue will list suppliers alphabetically, by location, and by product type. The user will also be allowed to browse the catalogue by scanning through product groupings.

Architect end users are interested in quality certification such as Agrément certificates or other independent certification of fitness for purpose. Manufacturers will be able to include this information on their Web pages. They will also be able to include product sheets containing construction details in machine-readable format such as DXF which the user can download. Architects often want to know a great deal of detailed information about products, for example, high-tech cladding and curtain walling. See for example Catháin and Maguire (1996).

Constructing the Catalogue

McNeill - McManus
52 York St
BELFAST
Tel: 01232 246951
BT15 1AW

1 - shop fronts
2 - patio doors
3 - windows, stained glass
4 - windows
5 - curtain walling
6 - aluminium panels
7 - decorative coloured glass
8 - fire resistant doors

The system will expect each product description line to be accompanied by a CI/SfB code. For many existing products this will entail a straightforward entry of an existing code. However, if required, the system will attempt to analyse the product description line and help the data entry coder to assign a CI/SfB code. This is done by an automated coding assistant. In the first instance the coding assistant scans existing product lines from other entries in the catalogue, to see if any match the new one. If so, the assistant suggests the CI/SfB code from the existing line. If no existing product descriptions correspond to the new one then the assistant deals with the individual words in the product description, looking them up in a dictionary of CI/SfB terms and suggesting possible values for CI/SfB fields. The assistant can also work through each of the CI/SfB fields separately, display the codes that are available for that field and then ask the coder to select from one of them.

The CI/SfB system was developed for the building industry and is widely used in Europe. The coding is based on a number of Tables.

Table 0, building type, contains an unbracketed number, e.g. 81 = housing.
Table 1, building element, contains a bracketed number, e.g. 56.9 = heating controls.
Table 2, construction form, contains an uppercase letter, e.g. = rigid sheets.
Table 3, material, contains a lower case letter, e.g. = glass.
Table 4, activity, contains a bracketed uppercase letter. It is not usual to compete every table. The codes may be further refined by adding numbers, so (21.1) n7 (M2) means cavity wall insulation using urea formaldehyde and (47) Ln2 means bitumen roof waterproofing membrane.

In some cases a single CI/SfB coding may be unduly restrictive in that a product description could equally well be assigned to two different categories. For example fire doors could equally well be coded under (K): fire, or (32): doors and openings. In manual systems where each manufacturers brochure or data sheet had to be filed into a single box: a single resting place had to be chosen, unless further copies could be obtained. Of course, in a computerised system this restriction no longer applies. If a coder wishes to enter more than one CI/SfB code for a product description then she/he is free to do this.

Searching the Catalogue

The user is presented with a form to fill when searching the database. He or she can specify various search criteria. The distance of the manufacturer may be important: the user may be interested in products of a certain type, or made by certain manufacturers. If distance is important, then he or she can specify that all companies must be within a certain radius. If the manufacturer is known then the user can type in the name or select the manufacturer from an alphabetical list. When it comes to finding a product in the catalogue the user is unlikely to be expert in CI/SfB codes. He or she is more likely to want to search for the product using his or her own product description which is in reality a string of key words. Most Web search engines allow users to search for information using key word searches and the catalogue will provide this facility.

However, simple key word searches are often unsatisfactory. For example, consider the word, cladding. This term refers to any form of outside surface on a building and may include external walls made from diverse materials. There may be many products which fit the description but it is possible that they have been described without the explicit use of the term cladding. The product description, curtain walling in the example above may be a product which the enquirer would like to see displayed as a result of the search.

The search engine is intended to cater for this situation, and, indeed for more complex ones. It operates in stages. Each stage returns a list of products which score a mark which is higher for earlier stages and lower for later stages. In the first stage the engine looks for products which match the user product description exactly. For example, if the user had specified curtain walling then the fifth line in the above example would be returned by Stage One. In Stage Two the search engine returns product descriptions that contain the same words as the users product description, but not necessarily adjacent, nor in the same order. For example, if the user had specified stained glass windows then Stage Two would return the third product in the example. So far, so good, and the next stage brings in the CI/SfB coding. Stage Three scans the existing look-up table which maps product descriptions to CI/SfB code. If the users product description has been given a CI/SfB code (in fact there is at least one product in the database which answers the users query exactly!) then the search engine finds this code and subsequently retrieves all products which have the same CI/SfB codes. For example if the user specifies cladding the search engine finds the CI/SfB code for cladding and then searches for all products with the same CI/SfB code.

We list below some of the results of such a search for (4-) or (41) meaning external wall finishes on the existing database:

Once the hits from the search are presented to the user as a Web page, the user can browse the page. If the supplier has provided extra information about a product the user can choose to follow a link to pages created by the supplier. These may include more detailed information on certification and downloadable drawings. The user may be directly connected to the suppliers own Web site if there is one. It is also possible for manufacturers to set up fax back information. The usual facilities allowing automatic generation of e-mail and fax messages to the manufacturer are also supplied.

Conclusion

This project will be highly innovative for this application domain. The facility of being able to carry out completely automatically a search of local manufacturers and then to get detailed information back from them instantly is something architects would jump at.

As well as providing a valuable service for local industry the project will provide insights into the effect of the Web on the nature of business.

In large companies information technology has had a profound impact. A big business now records details of all routine transactions and stores them in a single integrated database, allowing it to build up an accurate picture of the status of its enterprise at any point in time (Rayport and Sviokla, 1995). The economies of scale that have allowed this to happen have not been available to smaller companies. The Web makes it possible for these small companies to link in to this virtual world of information both cheaply and painlessly.

References

Hypertext References

HREF1

http://www.infc.ulst.ac.uk/cgi-bin/infdb/buscard?email=cm.shapcott - Mary Shapcott's Home Page.

HREF2

http://www.cincom.com - Stilwells Bed and Breakfast Guide to Britain and Ireland

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