Reports and Presentations - Construction Project Scheduling and Control - page 251

and retrieving information. For example, when a chief estimator needs
to find the amount of contingency that one of his estimators assessed in
an estimate (say, in Excel format), he should know exactly where to find
it. Such facilitation is important in large companies, especially those with
high employee turnover rates. Several software packages, such as Primavera
Contract Manager 2 (Oracle Primavera Systems, Inc., Bala Cynwyd, Pennsyl-
vania), Prolog Manager (Meridian Project Systems, Folsom, California), and
Project Management (Timberline, Beaverton, Oregon), were developed to
help organize project documentation and communication.
On a related subject, the author believes that much of the problem of
“weak memory” that many people complain of is actually a problem of “unor-
ganized memory.” Lack of organization, in all aspects of life, results in wasted
time, frustration, high stress, loss of business and profit, and even deteri-
oration in human relations. It is a good idea for each person, particularly
professionals, to be organized in every aspect of their lives.
10. Conformance to industry standards : As the world grows smaller, the construc-
tion industry is trying to find a common language. Many specifications were
written years ago with descriptions of products and services that no longer
are available or supported. The International Organization for Standardiza-
tion (ISO) 3 is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies, one from
each of more than 140 countries. ISO is a nongovernmental organization
that was established in 1947. ISO's mission is to promote the development
of standardization and related activities in the world with a view toward facil-
itating the international exchange of goods and services and toward devel-
oping cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological, and
economic activity. ISO's work results in international agreements that are
published as international standards.
Whether or not the construction or design firm follows ISO 9000,
or other standards, it must make sure that it conforms to the client's
specifications, the local codes, federal standards, other components of the
project, and general industry guidelines. For example, U.S. companies that
do international work often have to convert their measuring units to the
metric system and the date convention, month/day/year, to the world
standard, day/month/year. 4
11. Retrievable and transformable (from one form to another) : We are no longer in
the age of basements full of boxes and file cabinets that contain information
2 Formerly known as Expedition .
3 The term ISO is not an acronym for the name of the organization; it is derived from the Greek isos , meaning
“equal,” which is the root of the prefix iso that occurs in a number of terms, such as isometric .Formore
details, go to http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/ISOOnline.frontpage.
4 A safe practice in this regard is to spell the month's name, or at least the first three letters, for example,
Jun 15.