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The difficulty for the construction industry is tapping into the massive potential of the internet in an effective way.

Few would disagree that e-commerce might be a novel way to give organisations an edge over their competitors but in the long term they will be expected to use the internet effectively during all stages of the process. Some of the ways our working lives may be affected are considered below.

E-contracts

All building contracts will, at some stage in the future, be made online. Although many pre-contract procedures are conducted using online tendering agencies or pre-contract communications by email, it is still rare for building contract formation to take place solely online.

UK law imposes very few requirements for contracts to be in writing (save for creating and disposing of interests in land) and the four basic ingredients of contract formation will no doubt remain the same. That is, a contract requires an offer, an acceptance of said offer, consideration and an intention by the parties to create legal relations.

Nobody expects that different contract principles should apply to online transactions. However, working out when a contract has been concluded could be more dependent on the design of the online medium rather than the user having an in depth understanding of the principles of contract law The EU E-Commerce Directive deals with these problems by requiring that service providers:

• Describe the technical steps required to make a contract;

• Describe the technical means for correcting errors prior to order placement;

• Acknowledge receipt of a customer's order without undue delay; and

Although many pre-contract procedures are conducted using online tendering agencies, it is still rare for building contract formation to take place solely online

• Provide for contract terms to be stored and reproduced.

Already there are interesting alternatives that fall somewhere between purely paper-based contracting and purely online contracting. For example, www.signasp.com is a website where contract documents are secured and prepared. The parties to the contract are contacted via email with each party signing the document using encrypted or biometric passkeys. The transaction history is then logged and the signed documents stored in a central database. Hard copies of the signed documents are then sent out to all parties.

Signing documents has been used for centuries, but the law has never required that contracts must have signatures. However, their value for achieving certainty has fuelled the search for an electronic equivalent of the handwritten ink signature.

E-signatures can be achieved by using encryption. This allows contracting parties to identify both the computer from which a message is being transmitted and the person operating that machine, something that is impossible with a handwritten signature where a date may be added after the signature.

Sustainability

I attended a fascinating talk last month hosted by the London Constructing Excellence Club (www.lcec.co.uk). The talk was given by SUNtool (www.suntool.net) who demonstrated a powerful web-based modelling tool they have developed to optimise the ‘through life performance' of buildings.

The application is capable of accessing a wealth of data in order to associate a detailed set of location specific attributes to each virtual building. These include defining characteristics such as construction type, occupancy patterns, topography and solar radiation. The data can be downloaded as required direct into full scale virtual building models producing a four dimensional virtual building allowing the designers to track the durability of the building through its life cycle.

Assessing ‘through life performance' (based on durability data, replacement costs and energy use) can provide a useful management tool to achieve best value in terms of the whole life cycle of the building. Indeed, statistics demonstrate that over a 40-year life, maintenance and repair costs can far exceed the initial capital cost of a building. Centrally accessible durability data will also have implications for lawyers in the drafting of prohibitive material provisions and their interpretation.