THE USE OF CLOUD BASED APPLICATION TO ENHANCE CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Abstract

The proliferation of cloud and SaaS applications has led to an unprecedented rise in the number of applications within the enterprise. As digital business initiatives become a priority, the need for integrated data streams that can be made available to mobile devices, Apps and the Internet of Things (IoT) has become increasingly critical. Legacy integration infrastructure and ESBs are not equipped to support the scale of the construction industry. Enterprises that conduct business through digital channels need to put in place a cloud integration gateway that provides an integration tier that is targeted towards the need of an agile construction business. This comes in the form of an integration platform as a service. The construction sector is disintegrated and complicated, as it comprises multiple projects of differing sizes, managed by different players and stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle. The project is owned by the client but run and managed at different stages and phrases by different parties with their own interest and project objectives. This fragmentation and project focus has been described nationally and internationally as the need to change to a more process oriented business. This process oriented business can be facilitated using cloud based applications that can adapt to different projects and ultimately react to change in a dynamic manner. This paper examines the possibility of enhancing change management in the construction industry using cloud based middleware and software.