Introduction

The main problem targeted in this PhD research is the question how to help the BC industry to improve its value adding performance. In chapter 5, `Revisiting the research questions', the question has been restated as:

1. How can state-of-the-art web technology possibly help to realise new, dynamic BC processes that adequately serve the Client's needs (provide value for money) and, at the same time, serve the needs of the construction companies (provide money for value)?
2. How to use the NG Internet to provide both parties (and their application software) with the precise and semantically rich, on-line BC-object definitions?
3. How can software vendors take advantage of such a development?
4. What is the possible role of the traditional Specification in the newly innovated BC processes?

For BC to become a more value adding industry, knowledge integration seems a priority. At the moment, knowledge is either present in experts or codified in regulations, codes of practice, brochures and booklets. Also computer applications contain a lot of knowledge, the problem is that those tools only serve the experts. Knowledge that is directly available to non-experts is hard to find.

A second part is the strict Internet-availability and computer-readability of the data. Being able to access BC information in a generic way is a huge difference with current practice. Currently, most information is only available textually (or as 2D lines) and only available through application-specific methods.