Adoption to Online Collaboration in the Construction Sites of Developing Countries

Collaborative working is one of key success factors in construction industry as it is fragmented and multidisciplinary in nature. Online collaboration was introduced to the construction industry to provide a platform for project stakeholders to collaborate by exchanging information and documents smoothly within one repository system. A large number of merits were brought by using online collaboration like faster communication, less disputes and higher quality of project management. However, the level of adopting online collaboration among developing countries’ construction sector is not satisfactory. Therefore, this study was designed to identify those of factors hindering the adoption of online collaboration in the developing countries construction industry as well as proposing actions to improve the adoption level. Literature survey was conducted to gain sound knowledge on the research area and develop a comprehensive questionnaire form. Then, questionnaire forms distributed among experts to collect the primary data for this study. Findings and results show that online collaboration is very uncommon. It was also found that the major factors hindering its adoption in the construction industry are “Lack of awareness”, “Unavailability in local market” and “Weak IT infrastructure”. Furthermore, few solutions were determined to improve using online collaboration medium.