Collaborative project planning: A case study of seismic risk analysis using an e-engineering hub

Volatile partnerships are becoming popular and important in the global economy with the involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the development of e-business and e-engineering. This requires a new generation of collaborative project planning tools to be built. The e-HUBs (e-engineering enabled by Holonomic and Universal Broker Services) project has conceived and developed a novel approach to e-engineering services. Focusing on project preparation and planning, the e-engineering hub facilitates the outsourcing of engineering services and the fast creation of a project plan that can be executed by engineering teams. This paper presents the e-Hub approach to collaborative project planning and illustrates the key concepts and benefits of this approach through a case study produced as a result of the project. The evaluation results are also discussed.