A Blackboard-Based Negotiation for Collaboration in Construction Supply Chain System

The construction industry is being asked by more progressive clients to change its crude ways of working and to adopt more efficient business processes to improve its performance by adopting supply chain management (SCM) practices that have evolved in more advanced industries. Collaboration among the members of SCM plays a critical role to implement an effective SCM, but its implementation would not be easy only with the conventional information sharing mechanism. This study employs the idea of open tender concept with blackboard-based negotiation to develop a collaborative construction supply chain system. The open tender concept is designed to provide an open and free opportunity to all participants, which make a sound competition to obtain the tender. Blackboard-based negotiation is derived from the mechanism of negotiation among intelligent agents using a blackboard as a media where each agent exchange information.