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Abstract Quality management system implementation has become a must for construction companiesin some countries to be able to enter tenders. One of the most common quality standards is the ISO9000 quality management standard and many companies seek ISO 9000 certification in today’s highlycompetitive market. However, in getting this certification, most companies face difficulties, such as thehigh amount of paperwork, improper documentation, poor communication among employees and projectparticipants, and low employee morale as a result of lack of motivation. In this study, a web-based officeautomation systemwas developed.Web facilities and the databasemanagement capabilities ofMicrosoftVisual Studio 2008 were applied to create a data warehouse that was aimed to reduce paperwork,create a proper documentation system, improve communication, and calculate employee performances,in order to create a motivation system for company personnel. Short-term feedback of the practicalimplementation of the system demonstrated its practicality and advantages, and the positive view of themanagers. Also, it is anticipated that long-term feedbacks would also prove its appropriateness and easeof use.© 2011 Sharif University of Technology. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. IntroductionQuality Management System (QMS) certification has be-come amust in today’s highly competitive constructionmarket.One of the most common methods of quality management sys-temapplication to a construction company is ISO 9000 certifica-tion. While the reason for many companies wishing to achievea qualitymanagement certificate, like ISO 9000, is only for eligi-bility to enter tenders, some other companies seek for ISO cer-tification to benefit genuinely from its numerous advantages.However, construction companies face a number of difficultiesin the certification process, including an increase in paperwork,an improper documentation system and poor communicationamong personnel. As a result, these may cause re-working, asmentioned by Alshawi and Ingirige [1], low worker interest in applying new working methods [2–5], and low employeemorale and motivation.50125
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These problems make the certificationprocess arduous and thus some companies might even give up.The aforementioned problems will, on the other hand, in-fluence company performance. Literature shows a considerableincrease in the field of supply chain performance and its effectson company performance [6–19], and company performancemanagement and measurement [20–25]. The majority of re-searchers used structural equation modeling and, through thedevelopment of a number of hypotheses, tried to prove or re-ject thembased on a survey among different experts. However,research on performance quantification is relatively scarce, andless attention has been paid to employee performance.A number of office automation systems are currently beingused, such as Autodesk Constructware, Business Collaborator,and e.Build.ca. Autodesk Constructware creates a centralizeddatabase of all project documents, which can be accessed byall project participants, and which is capable of managingdocuments, design, bidding, costs, construction and operations.Business Collaborator facilitates collaboration across teams,automates processes and enables access to project information.It is only aimed to automate traditional paper-based processesto improve response times, reduce errors and cut costs. TheCollaborative Business Platform from e.Build.ca is an onlinecollaboration and project management tool designed for theplanning, design and implementation of construction projects.However, these programs were not designed for measuringemployee performance, or provide a decision tool formanagers 744 A.R. Rezaei et al. / Scientia Iranica, Transactions E: Industrial Engineering 18 (2011) 742–752working day. The role of information systems and database sys-tems on performance measurement was discussed in a studyconducted by Phusavat et al. [43].It can be concluded that the importance of company per-formance and the factors affecting it are stressed in differentstudies. However, a quantitative employee performance mea-surementmethod rarely exists. Thus it is believed that it is nec-essary to conduct a more comprehensive study on employeeperformance. Considering an Integrated Performance Mea-surement System (IPMS), a quantitative method using a datawarehousing technique was, thus, developed, which calculatesemployee performance by using three classic project progressissues, such as cost, time and quality [62]. These metrics wereemphasized in a number of research studies, to be themost im-portant measurement factors of performance [63–67].Thus employee performance measurement and motivationof personnel could create a competitive environment amongthem, which in-turn would help managers to control theirsubordinates, together with enhancing company performance.2.3. Data warehousingEnterprises are increasingly turning to software systemsto seek support for enterprise performance measures [68].Companies need to have proper information systems anddatabase management systems to capture and keep differentinformation, which are their most valuable resources.Successful support of managerial decision-making is criti-cally dependent upon the availability of integrated, high qual-ity information, organized and presented in a timely andeasily understood manner [69]. Despite the growing need formore information, every day organizations create billions ofbytes of data about all aspects of their business. It is estimatedthat only a small fraction of the data that are captured, pro-cessed and stored within the company is actually ever madeavailable to executives and decision makers [70]. The conceptof a DataWarehouse (DW) is part of the response by IT to meetthis need, as pointed out by Golnabi et al. [71]. A functionalDWorganizes and stores all available data needed for informa-tional and analytical processing over a historical time perspec-tive [72], and provides decisionmakers with consistent, timely,reliable and accessible data without a negative impact on theoperational systems from which the data is extracted [68,73].DW by itself does not create value. The value comes fromthe use of its data in other applications. Another fact is thata DW is not a ready package to be bought and used by acompany; instead, it should be specifically designed to meetcompany needs. This idea encourages companies to developtheir own DW and appropriate computer applications to solveand overcome their difficulties, and take the maximum benefitout of data warehousing capabilities.Jarke et al. [73] define a DW as a structured extensibleenvironment designed for the analysis of non-volatile data,logically and physically transformed from multiple sourceapplications to align with business structure terms, andsummarized for quick analysis. An important concept of a DWisthat its data comes from one or more operational applications,manipulated into a common format for the warehouse, andinserted into the warehouse with any necessary calculationsor additional appended data.