E-Portal for Construction Engineering Managers: Framework and 4-Tier Archtecture

Electronic construction information portals have become popular in recent years but most portals are intended for business transaction processing. This paper describes a web-based construction information portal (e-Portal) intended for use by construction engineers. A functional framework for the portal is presented along with a 4-Tier architecture including the Presentation Layer, Application Layer, Application Programming Interface(API) Layer, and the Database Layer. Construction related information such as legal regulations, standard specifications, technical manuals, construction materials and manufacturers is organized and presented to reflect the multiple functions of the e-Portal. With the presented e-Portal architecture, construction information can be acquired and processed via a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), mobile devices, and WWW(World Wide Web) with the use of the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) and Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL)).