Uncommon Sense and Artificial Intelligence for Re- Engineering Procurement Systems

Common sense and occasional innovations have hitherto failed to fuel more than incremental improvements in construction procurement systems. Even the bolder initiatives have not yet unleashed promised productivity gains which have been allegedly restrained by adversarial and otherwise inappropriate procurement systems. Both (a) the present proliferation of procurement options; and (b) the scattered body of experiential knowledge about their applications appear to need more structured consolidation in ‘knowledge-bases’, also so that they may be efficiently harnessed through an ‘expert system’ front-end. A recent pilot study project in Hong Kong led to the development of such a knowledge-based model of a proposed decision support system for improved procurement choices. This paper summarises relevant results and related observations from this study, that confirm the usefulness of such structured ‘knowledgebased’ advice for the upstream re-engineering of construction processes and relationships, through ‘smarter’ procurement and synergistic management.