The multi agent paradigm and organizational abstractions in construction e-business

The agent paradigm has been used by several researchers to build several complex construction industry specific systems ranging from e-business applications, cross-disciplinary communication to supply-chain management to contract administration. Because of the slow progress in the maturity of the deployment infrastructure, the implemented agent-based applications are generally based on models for closed systems. Given that recent developments in agent-oriented software engineering allow the definition of models that exploit the use of organizational abstractions, there is need to redefine classical agent-systems using the organizational metaphor. This paper focuses on Construction e-business as a deployment context. It starts with background information in the domain and proceeds to describe classical agent-centered models that were used to develop APRON, a construction e-business prototype. The paper then discusses the main drawbacks of the agent-centered approach and demonstrates how the organizational metaphor can be used to address these limitations providing an exemplary procurement scenario.