Grupo ICA, the largest construction group in Mexico, is involved in heavy, industrial, urban, and specialized construction works. As a construction contractor the main concern of ICA Group is the complete assessment of the events that take place at the construction sites. The number of construction sites varies depending on the kind of work to be performed and on the size of the projects. The opportune collection, concentration and analysis of data gathered at different levels of responsibility (front, area, project) will improve decision making which will ultimately lead to better efficiency and performance.

Six years ago ICA Group decided to accelerate the information systems (IS) growth rate which at that time was lagging behind its needs. The process selected included the specific assignment of IS to an executive at top management level, the creation of a cost center lifetime-limited staff area to develop general coverage information systems, and additional support to the profit center organization traditionally responsible for this activity. The result of this process was a master plan for the development of IS which initially focused on centralized-oriented IS, thus providing a strong platform for a decentralization stage. This second stage will have a stronger strategic impact in the organization where decentralized manual information procedures have been traditionally used.

Computer aided decentralization is possible with the existence of micro-computers, but a number of problems arise in this effort. They come from social and economic factors, such as the background of the users and the limited infrastructure at isolated construction sites.

The paper describes how an objective for construction sites information systems was established, the way hardware was selected, the developed applications, and the results and experiences that have been obtained.

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