Unlocking the Possibilities of Blockchain in Procurement and Management of Building Services Systems

Building Services Systems (BSS) are fundamental to ensure a comfortable and safe living environment in buildings. These systems involve significant stakeholder engagement, lengthy lifecycles, and substantial financial investments, necessitating a systematic Procurement and Management (PM) approach to handle their inherent complexity. While Blockchain Technology (BT) has been proposed for various construction applications, its potential in BSS remains unexplored. This paper addresses this gap by identifying issues in the PM of BSS, categorizing them according to the RIBA Plan of Work 2020, and proposing a BT-based framework to resolve these issues. A scoping review method was conducted using Scopus and Web of Science databases. A critical review of 102 carefully selected publications revealed the top 30 PM-related issues, including six recurring issues across all stages; over-involvement of stakeholders, lack of trust, difficulty in exchanging data, lack of transparency, lack of collaboration and delays in approvals. 11 key features of BT were identified; accountability, proper history records, high audibility, integrity, anonymity, disintermediation, easy data extraction, verification, distributed shareability, immutability, and security. A conceptual framework was developed, mapping the identified issues against BT features to demonstrate how BT can address the PM issues in BSS. This framework guides the development of a prototype for implementing BT in the PM of BSS in future research stages.