Electronic Markets for Architects—The Architecture of Electronic Markets

In recent years there has been a move towards more cooperation in the construction industry. While the traditional practice is that the architect chooses the trades, provides the construction plan, and tells the trades what to do, a new initiative has been formed to create cooperative construction teams. Here the architect will discuss details of the construction plan with the trades concerned and all parties work cooperatively on the construction project. This means that there will be many coordination tasks and that communication plays a pivotal role. The paper presents a framework for and an implementation of an electronic marketplace to support such cooperative construction teams. It will be argued that there must be a co-design of the business system (i.e. cooperative construction teams) and the IT system (i.e. the marketplace including the search, negotiation, and fulfilment phases) for efficiently supporting small and medium-sized companies participating in cooperative teams and interacting on electronic marketplaces.