Determining the indirect costs and benefits of IT in construction firms

Many construction companies are increasing their expenditure on Information Technology (IT) to obtain or even sustain a competitive advantage in their respective marketplaces. However, managers are often left with the quandary of how to evaluate investments in IT. Reasons of this difficulty has been suggested in the normative literature centring around the socio-technical (human and organisational) dimensions associated with IT deployment. The inability of managers to determine the true costs of deploying IT are considered attributable to a lack of knowledge and understanding of IT related costs. In developing a broader picture of such costs and their respective taxonomies, the research presented in this paper uses a structured case method to gain an understanding of how a construction firm embraced the IT evaluation process. A critical review of the IT evaluation literature is presented and a conceptual framework (CF) for IT evaluation is proposed. Findings from the case study are presented and discussed in the context of the CF.