BUILDING AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM FOR MANAGEMENT OF PROJECTS ((SOME WATER PROJECTS AS A CASE STUDY))

Abstract

Many useful softwares in projects management are available now. Ms Project and Primavera are some
examples of these softwares. Those programs need to be fed by information by the user. The users
usually collect this information from the project and design documents. This collection process needs
considerable time and efforts, and usually accompanied of some errors in data transfer process.
In order to reduce the required time and efforts and to eliminate individual errors in data transfer
process, an Integrated System is needed. This Integrated System can extract the graphical information
from an AutoCAD drawing and transfer it to a digital form suitable for processing in the project
management softwares such as Excel and Ms Project.
In this research an Integrated System (IS) was built, to connect three softwares, AutoCAD, Excel and
Ms Project, using Active X data transfer technology. The Integrated System was tested using three case
studies. Al-Nahrain University waste water network, the Islamic University water supply network, and
an irrigation and drainage project. The results indicated the capability of the system to transfer the
graphical data into digital data, and to conduct the quantity of survey of the selected projects.
It is worthy to mention that this system requires some modification that is should be adopted in the
AutoCAD drawings. The drawings should be performed using layers, and definition blocks for objects.
These modifications are simple and can be done easily. Moreover the system was built in a way that
gives the ability of adding other case studies (i.e., other types of projects).