Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to explore the use of numerous e-business enabling technologies within the construction industry. The term e-business first originated from the work of IBM and introduced the term e-business as a way of transforming key business processes by using Internet technologies. It is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions, and other compatible protocols and provides, users or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure. However, in the UK, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) developed a much broader view of e-business in their international benchmarking study analysing the adoption of e-business by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). They termed e-business as the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for business processes.