A Group Support System for improving value management studies in construction Qiping Shen * , Jacky K.H. Chung, Heng Li, Liyin Shen Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Accepted 29 July 2003 Abstract Group Support System (GSS) is a set of techniques, software and technology designed to focus and enhance the communication, deliberations and decision-making of groups. The thousands of GSS experimental studies and field studies that have been conducted in the past 2 decades demonstrate that GSS is successful in improving the efficiency, reliability and quality of the group decision-making process in meetings. This paper aims to introduce the application of GSS to support Value Management (VM) studies so as to improve the implementation of VM in the construction industry. It begins with an introduction to VM and the problems of implementing VM in construction, e.g. lack of information, lack of participation and interaction and difficulties in conducting evaluation and analysis. This is followed by a description of a GSS framework for VM studies and a specific GSS prototype system to illustrate how this framework can provide support in discussion, information, collaboration and decision analysis to overcome the existing problems in VM studies. The trial run of the prototype by professionals and the benefits of using the proposed system in VM studies have also been discussed in detail. D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Construction industry; Group Support System; Value Management 1. Introduction Since the early 1970s, Decision Support Systems (DSS) have been used to support complex decision- making and problem solving for individual decision makers. Over the past 2 decades, the making of many organizational decisions shifted from the individual to small teams within a firm or large groups of individuals from multiple firms. This involved DSS technology and extended its application to groups of decision makers in the form of workshops or meetings [1]. Group Support Systems (GSS), originally called Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), emerged in the 1980s. GSS is defined as an interactive computer-based system that facilitates the solution of unstructured problems by a set of decision makers working together as a group. It consists of hardware, software, people and procedures [2,3]. It is also known as the Collabo- ration System, Computer Support Cooperative Work Systems (CSCW), Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS). In short, GSS is a set of techniques, software and technology designed to focus on and enhance the communication, deliberations and decision making of groups [4,5]. GSS is one of the real success stories of research in the MIS academic community. Thousands of experi- 0926-5805/$ - see front matter D 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2003.07.001 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +852-2766-5817; fax: +852- 2764-5131. E-mail address: bsqpshen@polyu.edu.hk (Q. Shen). www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon Automation in Construction 13 (2004) 209 – 224