Conclusions

The hypothesis presented in this chapter is that the value adding performance of the BC industry can be much increased by:

• Stimulating the development of domain specific BC Ontologies containing definitions of BC terms following the structuring mechanisms described above.
• Relating the different BC Ontologies in a national bcoWeb.
• Stimulating the development of co-operative BC web services that `understand' the BC terms and can be used as references to support communication between all the stakeholders--including the general public--where computer applications and building documents are also seen as stakeholders.

If, like in the Netherlands, the government wants to have a more open, value adding and innovative BC sector, participation in initiatives like the one experimented here is necessary. Without instruments to improve communication and to raise the value adding capacity of BC, all the other efforts don't work out in practice. Without the means to implement new ways of working, those new ways won't come about.