TIME-BASED COMPETITION - COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE TOOL FOR A E/C FIRMS/

With the ever-increasing competition in the architecture, engineering, and construction (A/E/C) industry, more and more A/E/C firms are cons idering new business strategies to gain a competitive market advantage , while still taking care of the needs and requirements of their custo mers. A new class of strategies, time-based competition (TBC) strategi es, responds to the new competitive conditions of the market today, id entifying time as the most critical variable in today's competitive ar ena. Although these strategies have been extremely successful for an i ncreasing number of firms in the industrial and service sector, A/E/C firms have not fully realized their strategic importance in gaining a competitive edge in the market. This paper describes some isolated exa mples of limited application of TBC in the A/E/C Industry, and introdu ces a conceptual framework for the implementation of TBC as a strategi c tool for gaining a competitive advantage.