A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Civil Engineering

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2001

It is almost impossible to conduct a substantially significant construction project without a change order ever occurring. The facilitation of a change order is one construction process that involves nearly all the construction players, namely: the Owner, Architect/Engineer, Contractor, Subcontractor and Supplier. The change order has been found to be one of the more decisive factors involved in claims and disputes and therefore becomes a potential cause of cost overruns and delays. It is unfortunate for the construction industry that it falls weak at the very solution to change order management. The solution being, good document facilitation. This research presents a proposal of applying the concept of B2B (business-tobusiness), information systems development and web technologies as a possible aid for change order documentation management. The proposed concept was elaborated by producing the different business process maps involved in change order management. Then, applying systems analysis and design methods an information system for the change order processes was developed. A prototype called COMS (Change Order Management System) was built utilizing Active Server Pages as the core technology. The development of the prototype aims to affirm the proposed viability of the B2B concept in change order management for construction, by enabling the linking of the different construction participants in terms of transacting change order related documents.