Web-based collaboration in construction has been in practice for several years. Current commercial Web-based management systems are document-based. To overcome the problems of information overload and data incompatibility commonly associated with document-based systems, this paper proposes a Meta-Data-Based (MDB) approach that extracts information from the original Web-based documents and re-organizes it in an integrated Web page according to specific users or tasks. The core technology used in

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... this kind of system is the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which serves as a common language that facilitates data exchange and rapid location of information. A comparison of the paper-based approach and the MDB one for a Request For Information (RFI) case demonstrates a few advantages: the MDB process provides the convenience of timely, complete, and integrated information, which helps to speed up the decision-making process and increase its accuracy so that downstream parties can take faster action. The method of converting traditional construction documents to MDB ones is discussed with the help of an XML schema for the RFI. Screen shots of the MDB process are presented and its applications and implications discussed.