Construction Services on the Web Ziga Turk, Assist. Prof. Univ. of Ljubljana. Ljubljana. Slovenia Communication in Construction The end products of the construction process are built structures. Due to its complexity. the construction process is broken into several sub-processes which in their early stages produce nothing but information — specifica- tions, conceptual guidelines, feasibility studies. design proposals. construction plans — and not actual. physical struc- tures. It has been suggested that "any [de- sign] problem is a problem of lack of information" [1]. Either the informa- tion does not exist. and so must be created, or it exists but is not available when and where it is needed. Since 1960s, computers have been used in construction to create new informa- tion, first with structural analysis soft- ware in the 1970s. then with computer- aided drafting tools. expert systems. etc. Since the late 1980s. research has also focused on the integration of the fragmented construction processes us- ing information technology [2. 3]. The 1990s have seen a growing interest in communication technologies that concentrate on finding, moving and us- ing information — an endeavor known as information logistics [4]. Several im- portant communication technologies are related to the Internet, and their relevance to various construction-re- lated applications will be discussed in this paper. Support Technologies The first communications technologies to support construction were the clay tablet or the slate and chalk. followed h paper and ink. Technical drawing and descriptive geometry, established in the 18th century. provided the prin- ciples for technical information ex- change. The supreme role of the in- dividual master builder was thus dis- tributed among specialists who ex- changed information in the form of precise technical drawings. The steady growth in the capacity to communicate technical information has directly contributed to the fragmentation and specialisation of the building profes- sion [5]. At the end of the 1980s. when a lot of construction data was generated by computers. the effort began to use them to find and retrieve information. Information was transferred using copper wires or fibre optic cables (called "lines") that connected the mainframes, workstations and person- al computers into a local area network, or LAN. Information was transmitted "on-line". In the 1990s. the Internet enabled connections not only to com- puters within an office, but worldwide. The Internet Internet technology has its origins in a 1960s solution to military communica- tions between command posts [6]. Af- ter 1984. the US National Science Foundation applied the same kind of technology to connect computers at major universities in the United States. It was called the Internet — shortened from "inter-network" — a network that interconnects other networks. By the mid 1990s, the Internet had become a widely used communication technolo- gv among researchers around the world. Electronic mail began to re- place the telephone and fax: FTP (file transfer protocol) allowed entire pa- pers. drawings. etc. to he sent comput- er-to-computer: and Network News enabled discussions among users. In principle, all computers connected to the Internet are peers: in practice. however, some are service-providers. "servers," and some are service-users. The former should be connected to the Internet 24 hours a day. The latter are "clients." for example. personal com- puters and work stations, which are used to access the Internet servers. Using the Internet was quite complex until early 1990s. In 1989. the Euro- pean Institute for Particle Physics (CERN) developed an Internet ser- vice that enabled the distribution of hypertext. Hypertext is text organized similarly to Windows Help, which, in addition to the traditional structure of pages. sections and subsections, in- cludes "links" or "pointers" to access related topics and documents. A link is displayed in a special way (usually un- derlined, or in a different colour) and clicking on the link with a mouse deliv- ers another document. In 1993. when the US National Centre for Super- computing Applications (NCSA) de- 'eloped a user-friendly graphical pro- gram for reading hypertext documents and browsing the Web, the use of the Internet exploded beyond the scientif- ic community. It is estimated that as of April 1997. there were about 100000 companies publishing information on the Web, using about 200000 server computers and offering 30 million doc- ume nts. Internet in Construction The construction industry cannot be considered a pioneer in the use of the Internet compared to the disciplines of computing, physics. or mathematics, Early Internet construction-related services were dedicated to researchers and educators. One of the first that has survived to date is the Co-opera- 292 Reports Structural Engineering International 4/97 Summary The World Wide Web is an increasingly important source of information as well as a communications platform for civil engineers and other construction practi- tioners. The paper introduces the Web and addresses the development of con- struction-related Web services. Some sample Web sites supporting virtual re- search teams. interest groups. construction information systems and knowledge dissemination are presented. The impact of Web-based information technology on construction practice is also considered. Peer-reviewed by international experts and accepted b' the IABSE Publications Committee