Guys in this business are guys who like to build things," says Steve Setzer, spokesman for Constructware, an application service provider that supplies management support services to the construction sector. "They don’t like paperwork." } Or, until recently, computers. } Setzer is struggling to untangle a paradox: IT is about managing complexity, and the average construction project is a sink of complexity. Gargantuan construction projects are veritable swamps. Yet the construction industry has tended to be a lagging adopter of IT. "Until recently, construction IT usually reported to the CFO because the only information technology in the business was that supporting accounting," says Mark Napier, a vice president and systems manager at Bovis Lend Lease, the London-based construction giant currently building the AOL Time Warner tower in New York City (among other projects).

Instead of a consensus as to what has inhibited the spread of IT within the construction industry, there’s speculation. "Contractors see their business as living from project to project," suggests Joel Koppelman, CEO of Primavera, a project management software company. "That [short-term] view might make them reluctant to add [continuing] overhead expenses, like an IT staff."

No doubt the high stakes in construction?in terms of dollars and even lives?could lead to a reluctance to adopt new technologies. (Tort lawyers, for example, love to nail contractors who miss deadlines or incur on-the-job injuries for using methods that are considered "new and unproved.")

Finally, the construction industry tends to be highly outsourced. Clients hire contractors who hire subcontractors who hire other subcontractors, and this may inhibit the kind of information-sharing that IT would facilitate. Scott Unger, president and CEO of Constructware, has stated that he feels there is a dark, lingering suspicion in construction that "making information readily available and transparent could be troublesome."

Whatever the reason, in the past few years this resistance has begun to crumble. IT is starting to permeate the construction industry, helping it to manage issues such as centralization, facilitating collaboration among subcontractors, and streamlining scheduling and materials handling. And as construction projects grow in complexity?with larger jobs, more government regulation, and more sophisticated materials and building techniques?the role of IT in managing that complexity inevitably will grow along with it.

The world, as we know both intuitively and experientially, is becoming an increasingly complex place in which to live and work. And in many ways, the nature of complexity?its qualities, impact and the challenges it presents?is consistent across all endeavors and industries, whether in construction, retail, manufacturing or government. Fortunately, IT development efforts and innovations travel easily across sector boundaries. Adding a market as large as construction to the IT universe will advance the art of complexity management for us all.