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zations. According to Vrijoef and London (2002), to promote greater transparency and collaboration
the organizational approaches to the construction between suppliers and thereby reduce waste (pro-
SC are observed on three main levels of increasing curement, process and material) through all levels
complexity of relationships: of the SC. The drivers for the adoption of BIM are
• intra-organizational, i.e. within organizations the requirement to:
• reduce asset costs and achieve greater ope-
belonging to an individual SC;
• inter-organizational, i.e. between organizations rational efficiency;
• facilitate greater efficiency and effectiveness of
within projects;
• cross-organizational, i.e. between many orga- construction SCs;
• assist in the creation of a forward-thinking sec-
nizations in clusters of the construction indu-
stry. tor. In the UK, a number of industry focused
programs have been put in place to assist the
Furthermore, the role of subcontractors can be SC to gear up to Government’s mandate that
public sector centrally procured construction
viewed also from the viewpoint of procurement projects will be delivered using BIM by 2016.
and thus the client. Capital (Capex) and opera- According to G. Watts (member of the UK Con-
struction Industry Council):
tional (Opex) expenditure decisions influence the
BIM will integrate the construction process
relationships between procurers and construction and, therefore, the construction industry. But
it will also have many additional benefits […].
partners. The project-based nature of construc- It will enable intelligent decisions about con-
struction methodology, safer working arran-
tion projects supports Capex decisions primarily, gements, greater energy efficiency leading to
carbon reductions and a critical focus on the
which is a completely different approach to procu- whole life performance of facilities (or assets).
rement based on Opex decisions in repetitive rela- With the present paper, our research group of Poli-
tecnico di Milano would like to give its contribution
tionships. One of the most appealing areas within to this stimulating debate, analyzing how some exi-
sting and well known OM-(O…. M…..) SCM tech-
the procurement is related to the management of niques, combined with some innovative methods in
an overall approach to ETO companies’ manage-
moneylenders, a very special type of suppliers in- ment, can improve ETO companies performance in
today’s pretty new competitive scenario.
volving some specific high-value services. To this
New product / project
purpose, in 2012, the Italian standardization body development and SCM
alignment mechanisms
issued the UNI/TS 11453 standard, entitled “gui-
Supply Chain performance, in terms of e.g. ca-
delines for financing procedures pability and costs, is mainly determined in the
feasibility, design and development stages of
in construction”, which is sup- the product. Therefore, being able to align New
Product/Project Development (NPPD) and SCM
The deployment posed to prove very effective in activities from product planning to material ac-
of advanced SC CSCM, by emphasizing the op- quisition, assembly, test and delivery becomes
applications within portunity of mitigating the SC risk paramount to minimize supply chain risks related
the manufacturing of construction projects from the to new product launch, and to maximize supply
sector highlights early phases of design. Finally, chain performance during manufacturing and
delivery.
understanding the interdepen- NPPD–SCM alignment can be achieved throu-
gh the planned design of the interface between
lessons learned from dent decisional models of project project/product development activities and sup-
the manufacturing managers and subcontractors ply chain design activities. In this, two issues are
sector with respect helps to reduce the undesirable at stake: the definition of product features (e.g.
to opportunities impacts of subcontracting major bill of materials and product architecture), and
portions of activities in construc-
and challenges for tion projects.
IT deployment in The area of CSCM related to the
construction Information Technology (IT) de-
als with the need for large flows
of information within and across
firms. ITs promise support for in-
formation sharing and analysis, being an essential
enabler of improved performance. The deployment
of advanced SC applications within the manufac-
turing sector highlights lessons learned from the
manufacturing sector with respect to opportunities
and challenges for IT deployment in construction.
Moreover, whilst IT applications and tools are often
seen as supporting traditional construction pro-
ductivity, the close coordination of field production
needs and off-site supply production is a necessary
component of SC performance. The most conspi-
cuous emerging IT approach in the CSCM area is
well known as Building Information Modeling (BIM).
One key competitive advantage of BIM is its ability
16 Impiantistica Italiana - Maggio-Giugno 2015
