Multiple Device Collaborative and Real Time Analysis System for Project Management in Civil Engineering

Complexity in civil engineering projects has increased over the years, which has led to an increase in the number of organizations involved in those projects. In today’s environment, these organizations operate in different parts of the world requiring their personnel to be geographically distributed. However, current project management practices require project personnel to be geographically collocated and, thus, are unable to provide the infrastructure to support geographically distributed project management teams. In addition, current project management practices require access to personal computer (PC) based resources for project information, which is not always a feasible alternative for on-site project personnel, as it requires certain hardware and office configurations. Thus, alternatives to PC-based resources such as personal digital assistants (PDA) or phones are needed for information access. Moreover, once project information has been conveyed to all project personnel, the system should aid them in terms of providing data analysis tools and presenting technical or management solutions to the problems encountered by the project personnel. This paper presents a collaborative project management system with a knowledge repository, analysis resources, and multiple device access to support the infrastructure of distributed project management teams in complex architecture/engineering/construction projects. The primary goal for such a system would be to provide a platform where project information can be effectively shared with any of the project management personnel from anywhere and with a very few limitations on the computing device.