E-business adoption: Case study on Melbourne city council CH2 building

Web portals, online databases and E-business tools will play an increasingly important role in the building and construction industry for implementing and formalising sustainable design practices. This paper first offers a framework to identify and address a gap in the research literature on the incentives and impediments to the uptake of new E-business practices. We then focus on an E-business application for green building design using a case study involving the Melbourne City Council. Interviews with key stakeholders were designed and implemented to assess the usefulness of web sites and portals during three building stages: (1) design, (2) construction and (3) occupation. Results focus on the new Council House 2 Building (also known as CH2), one of 250 buildings for which the Melbourne City Council (MCC) has planning and operations responsibility. Finally, we extract lessons learned from this `World Leader Status¿ Green Building to offer best practices that will support uptake and innovation of E-business in the design and early construction phases as well as the use of web portals and other online tools for decision-making in construction management procedures, commissioning purposes and ongoing facilities management.