Towards a sustainable services innovation in the construction sector

Abstract

In this paper, we report on a business case in the construction sector where we have designed and prototyped an innovative Web-based distributed document management application. It supports various exchange and sharing of information services between the different stakeholders involved in a construction project. The development of the application is based on a service-oriented architecture and follows a systematic model-driven engineering approach. Besides the application itself, the paper also reports on a Sustainable Services Innovation Process (S2IP) guiding our activities related to the valorization and the successful technology transfer of a demonstrator into an innovative product. We illustrate how this innovation process has been applied to this business case in the construction sector where a networked value constellation has been identified and realized with professionals of the construction sector (including a standardization body), software houses and our technology transfer centre. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.