- home
- » press room
- » articles
- » article 11
- » articles
- » press room
Insight Article
New Tools for Best Practices
For Project Execution
By Joe Morray
Project practices have been affected (improved) by the evolution of scalable project information solutions. The two most important technology evolutions in the last few years have been:
The merging of information management and collaboration. This is an important development, as the project processes are in their essence both a collaborative and information management challenge. Traditional design and materials management systems are effective in globally capturing and relating information, but have been cumbersome, at best, for rapid changes and evaluatory processes. Collaboration systems have taken full advantage of Internet-based technologies, allowing for exchange of information between multiple parties in a simple, intuitive interface. The challenge has been that these systems typically provide little change management functions, and tend to be friendly replacement for flat file systems. The merger of these two technologies provides a production platform for codifying project work processes, dealing with both change management and sharing of information across multiple organizations, and progressively monitoring the development of information.
Keys to this success of these hybrid information management/collaboration systems are:
- The ability to provide security at various levels, with access denied or allowed for individual information types and project areas
- The management of users both within a corporate firewall and outside, providing a secure method for importing and exporting information
- Rapid configuration capability, which allows a variety of project standards and templates to be configured and implemented globally
- All interfaces are thin client based, providing a common look and feel as well as substantially reducing administrative costs by not requiring local installations
- The availability of full-function workflow engines, which allows codifying repeated project processes for global use.
The second key technology advance related to project processes is the improvement in the speed and reliability of network technologies and the ability for information distribution on a real-time basis globally. While there are still geographic regions for which modern networks have not reached (in some cases, the telephone is a major advance), overall we are seeing consistent improvements. Further, hardware and software technology is allowing remote locations to be connected through replication and managed as part of the overall infrastructure.
The impact of these advances is that project centers can effectively collaborate on an interactive basis. This is particularly valuable for access to information at the project sites, allowing for rapid information searching and publishing as the project progresses. Major EPC companies are increasingly taking advantage of global networking.
The bottom line is that the project processes can be continually enhanced through the leveraging of systems that make use of these technological advances. We continue to strive toward realizing the project benefits of information anywhere, any time, and in any form.
Joe Morray is president of Trinity Technologies Corp., a process and power industries consulting firm that helps owner/operators and EPC firms succeed in the use of information systems. The company specializes in driving companies to align work processes, technology, and organizational change requirements for the plant environment.
EMC/Documentum
