Management of Engineering Design Phase

This paper critiques the common practice in managing and tracking the engineering design phase of major projects and presents an alternative integrated approach. It addresses in detail the development of control budget, project schedule, progress measurement procedure, and project data base to accomplish full cost and scheduling integration. Cost schedule integration is achieved by: (1) Developing control budget based on the project work breakdown structure (WBS); (2) identifying all project documents on the project WBS; (3) grouping the project documents in work packages; (4) making reference to the work packages on the project schedule; (5) determining distinguishable events (control points) for each package; and (6) using the earned value concept as the means for progress measurement. The procedure is capable of objectively determining the progress of the scheduling activities, performance indices, and budget forecasts. A numerical example and a case study are provided to illustrate the implementation and computational procedure of the presented approach.