Phillippine Construction Enterprises Launch 'Vortal' to Boost Industry
To perk up the sluggish domestic construction industry, six
of the country's construction giants, have jointly launched a
vertical portal, or "vortal," dedicated to the industry.
The site, called myCVP.com (www.mycvp.com
), seeks to
improve the traditional business practices among construction firms
in the country. It allows members to buy and sell construction materials,
share supervise construction projects, and exchange information.
The consortium's Web site was developed in cooperation with portal
developer BayanTrade (http://www.bayantrade.com ), itself a
consortium composed of the country's largest enterprises. Companies
involved include Ayala Land Inc., DM Consunji, EEI Corp., Fort
Bonifacio Development Corp., Greenfield Development Corp., and
SM eVentures, Inc.,
The construction industry is expected to save more than 2 billion
Philippine pesos ($38.4 million) within three years through MyCVP.com,
according to the consortium's rough estimates.
George Yang, CEO of SM eVentures and also the project director of
MyCVP.com, said the vortal would help reduce administrative costs by
20 percent to 30 percent. He added that the use of the vortal could
result in total project savings by 2 percent to 3 percent.
"Don't be fooled by the low project savings. Depending on the size of one
project, the savings would still be considerable," he said.
Yang added: "The idea is to develop a community for the construction
industry in the Philippines and break barriers between large and small
companies. There is a large market base just beyond the shores of the
Philippines and that is where the smaller construction players could tap."
He also said myCVP.com would restructure the supply chain management,
which is one of the more tedious processes borne by a construction firm
bidding for a particular project.
Carol Carreon, BayanTrade CEO said myCVP.com is expected to generate a
2.3 billion pesos ($44.2 million) value within two to three years. She
added that
prior to the formal launch of the vortal, close to 30 bidding transactions
were
already made through it, five of which were major projects and another
23 subsidiary bids.
"The biddings were conducted to test if an online version of a construction
bidding system would work. It did and it was even more efficient since
there
was no need for runners to send or receive bidding documents," Carreon
explained.
Carreon added that they are inviting smaller construction firms to join
MyCVP.com, which she said could greatly benefit from using the portal's
facilities. "Joining the consortium would not be free for anyone, but we're
asking them to look at the savings they could generate when they join, in
terms of money, time and efforts," she said.
As early as August, a joint venture agreement was signed by the country's
six construction firms to establish the online construction portal. To
date,
two other construction enterprises, Aboitiz Land and Lopez-owned First
Philippines are still being persuaded to join the consortium.
Yang said they are considering partnerships with foreign-based construction
vortals such as North American-based Buzzsaw.com and Asian-based
ICFox.com. He said a partnership could be in place by mid-next year.
He said the partnership would facilitate the entry of the country's
construction industry into foreign projects. "It should be fair that
construction companies here could offer their services to foreign projects
at much lower costs. The partnership would widen our e-procurement system
and project collaboration," he said.
--Reported By Alex F Villafania, Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .