E-Collaboration in a Multiple Engineering Projects Environment: A Facilities Development Approach

With the development of Information Systems (IS) for project lifecycle management, there is a new competitive scenario where organizations, suppliers (contractors or manufacturers) and clients could collaborate in facility development projects. An e-collaboration environment is a set of integrated information technologies that are required to create an infrastructure for a simultaneous and concurrent multiple projects management in distributed networks. Some companies have failed in the implementation of a complete e-collaboration environment due to the lack of a holistic perspective. In this paper a framework to integrate an e-collaboration environment for multiple projects management is presented. Important issues for a multi-project management as human resources, projects organization, projects activities, technologies and methodologies, are described. Recommendations about the implications for the implementation of an e-collaborative environment are presented, from a current case in an Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) company.