Construction portal under way

By ADAM GIFFORD

Key construction industry suppliers have given Carter Holt Harvey ebusiness subsidiary Velocit-e approval to proceed with building an industry internet portal.

Consultant Mathew Blomfield, who brought the Construction Net consortium together, said the scale and cost of the project were less than had been proposed last year.

"With current market conditions and all those dot bombs out there, there was no way we could get venture capital for this sort of website, so the participants are putting their hands in their pockets to get the job done," he said.

Velocit-e general manager Darren Wallbank said the first pilot should be live by the end of next month.

He said the developers were concentrating on providing a way for users to tie into key customers and suppliers.

Operation of the site will be funded by subscriptions and charges for extra services.

Velocit-e is building the Construction Net using Cyberglue, a content management product developed by local company 3kb.com.

The pilot involves a shopping centre developer, who will use another local product, Collaborate from Greenwood Technology, to manage project documentation online.

This is similar to the approach followed by the successful United States construction industry portal Buzzsaw.com.

"It's simpler than Buzzsaw but we want to learn as we go along," Mr Wallbank said.

The Collaborate document management system is already being used to manage the project.

The first stage requires the site to have links to foundation suppliers, industry news feeds, tender sites and Government information, as well as some project tools.

The developers will then work on exchange and transaction functions, and eventually aim to enable collaborative transactions between members.

"We're trying to build confidence by getting things going.

"It's a very traditional industry, but it is asking which parts of this 'e-stuff' will add value," Mr Wallbank said.

Mark Conelly, chief financial officer of plumbing and electrical supplies group Mico Wakefield, said the Mico Plumbing, Mico Pipelines and Cory's Electrical chains would be involved, but it was still too early to know whether Master Trade, recently bought by Mico, would join.

He said Mico saw Construction Net as a low-risk way of learning about e-commerce as it waited for its parent company, Crane Group, to roll out a major JD Edwards enterprise resource planning system on both sides of the Tasman.

"We have websites but they are low level. We have very little EDI (electronic data interchange) activity, almost no electronic transmission of purchase orders, no dynamic inventory, and until we finish the JD Edwards roll-out we can not do a lot more," he said.

Other firms involved include geosynthetics supplier Maccaferri, Boise Cascade (as New Zealand Office Supplies), Protector Safety Supply, Carter Holt Harvey and W. Stevenson and Sons.

Chris Brockliss, managing director of Maccaferri, said construction companies would eventually demand that suppliers communicated electronically.

He said the civil engineering industry was not using such techniques but the advantages of ecommerce meant it was just a question of time before businesses were forced to jump on board.

This was because of the cost savings and logistical efficiencies available.