Civil construction projects not only need to be executed on time; these also require that budgetary overruns are not allowed to take place needlessly. The traditional constraints involving time, quality, and money must always be paid close attention for a project to be considered commercial and engineering success. In this chapter, the authors discuss the role of project management software and the various commercial options available in the software market for entrepreneurs, engineers, and project planners to explore. They also discuss the need for activity codes and project scheduling types and the significance of these in civil construction engineering. The importance of planning and scheduling cannot be overestimated in a world where competition is high and civil construction companies often find themselves on razor's edge to stay afloat and remain profitable.
TopConstruction Management – A Brief History
Construction Management as we know today has evolved from a merger of associated concepts, practices and ideas stemming from construction, engineering and defence. It is said that construction management is the child of Henry Gantt, who is the USA first developed a bar chart as a tool for managing and monitoring construction activities. His work gave rise to the important work breakdown structure (WBS) among many other modern construction management techniques and tools known today. Progressively, a novel approach known as the “milestone method” was developed to gauge accurately progress of a project. The individual bars on a progress chart were referred to as milestones which gave rise to the “milestone method”. To assist in handling serial methods of production as in a production line, a “line of balance” technique was developed to handle repetitive tasks.
Sometime in 1957, a critical path scheduling (CPS) technique (Bennett, Laurence, 1977) was developed that could be supported by computers and latest advancements that were then being made in the field of Information Technology. Later, the CPS was modified to form critical path method (CPM). At around the same time, two important mathematical models were developed for project scheduling:
- 1.
Booz-Allen & Hamilton developed the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) in association with the Lockheed Corporation for conducting work on the US Navy’s Polaris nuclear submarine missile programme.
- 2.
The DuPont Corporation and the Remington Rand Corporation jointly set about to develop the famed critical path method (CPM) for management of maintenance at plans.
It did not take long for these mathematical approaches (Kumar, 1998) to be adopted by the private sector in order to boost manufacturing processes and grow more efficient in rapidly developing markets and economies. These two mathematical approaches further gave rise to precedence networks that are considered as specialized techniques to be applied in repetitive or serial production environments. Graphical Evaluation Review Techniques (GERT) was also developed at around this period that catered to more than a single uncertainty in a given system.
The progression of Information Technology in terms of hardware and software (Kumar, 1990) resulted in production of more powerful and cheaper computers. Projects that were considered too big for traditional computing methods to handle now began to be handled with relative ease using Information Technology. Information Technology now makes it possible to plan and monitor progress of not only resources alone, but also of time and scheduling of project activities (Lewis, 2002) along with individual sub-activities on a micro scale. To serve the interest of construction management and construction industry, the Project Management Institute (PMI) was created in 1969 in the USA. In 1981, the PMI began work on and soon published “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK). This guide was written to address all guidelines and standards of practice which are followed in the construction industry and its management. Founded in 1967, a European organization similar to PMI took shape. The International Project Management Association (IPMA) worked hand in hand with PMI to shape modern global project management standards that are adopted worldwide.
TopWhat Is A Project Management System?
The primary objective of a project management software is to provide a stable platform for organizing, strategizing and forming estimations that can be as accurate as possible. A sophisticated project management software can have as many features as possible for planners and engineers to take into account resource breakdown structures, resource availabilities, rates to name a few. Depending on nature and complexity of project management software can be any of the following types that are considered major ones in the industry: