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The success of an engineering project is influenced by four main factors: the characteristics of the project itself, the project contract, the project participants and the interactive process. At present, the increase of project complexity, the change of scope and the shortening of contract period put forward more and more strict requirements for the interaction efficiency between project participants; In addition, the Internet can break through the limitations of time and space and support synchronous and asynchronous communication. In recent years, the network-based project management system (WPMS) has made unprecedented development. According to relevant data, in developed countries, the number of companies establishing virtual project teams through such systems will double every six months. However, in China, few engineering projects adopt this system. Even if this system is used, its application scope is very limited because of its ignorance of the system or the fact that the system itself is out of touch with the domestic project management. This paper aims at expounding the development status and trend of WPMS at home and abroad. Firstly, this paper summarizes the history of WPMS, combs the definition of WPMS, and summarizes the related concepts that have appeared in recent years. Then, the basic architecture, key technologies and functions of the system are analyzed. Then, by introducing three typical WPMS systems, the present situation of WPMS is expounded. Finally, the development trend of WPMS is summarized.
Generation, development and definition of 1WPMS
The emergence and evolution of 1. 1WPMS
The earliest WPMS came into being in 1996, the IITP (Internet Interoperability Test Plan) project conducted by Bell Communication Laboratory in the United States. Participants in this project come from some telecommunications units in the United States and Canada, and they interact with the project information through the World Wide Web browser and HTTP protocol. The experimental results show that the World Wide Web and its ease of use provide a good virtual collaborative working environment for geographically dispersed project teams, and overcome the obstacles brought by geographical dispersion to project change control, project information exchange and team cooperation. After nearly 10 years of development, WPMS has gone through two main development stages from the functional point of view.
To illustrate the problem, suppose there are three projects: project 1, 2, 3; There are three participants: general contractor GC (general contractor), subcontractor SC (subcontractor) and supervision unit E (engineer). Of course, in the actual process, there should be other project participants, such as owners, design units, materials and equipment suppliers, government departments and so on. In order to simplify the problem, these participants are omitted, which does not hinder the explanation of the problem. Projects 1, 2 and 3 are GC projects, in which subcontractor SC participates in project 2 and supervision company E participates in project 3.
The following two main stages of WPMS development are introduced respectively.
(1)WPMS single project management stage. At this stage, WPMS must have a capable participant. In this case, the general contractor GC; In order to manage the projects it participates in, GC must establish WPMS；; Project 1, 2, 3 respectively; If a new project is added, GC must create a new WPMS. GC users need to use three different usernames and passwords to access three projects. The system view of WPMS at this stage is shown in figure 1.
Such a system has obvious shortcomings: 1) For GC, it is necessary to establish information such as address book, user authentication and security configuration file, project management system, industry regulations and norms for each project, thus generating data redundancy; 2) 2) It is also difficult for GC to integrate all the project data it participates in to assist decision-making; 3) For SC and E, they often participate in other projects at the same time, which are likely to be managed by other WPMS. If they need to analyze the information of the projects they are involved in, they must solve the compatibility problem of WPMS data from different manufacturers.
(2) The multi-project management stage of 2)WPMS. In order to overcome the shortcomings of data sharing and integration in single project management, people have developed multi-project management systems. At this stage, GC users can access all projects of the company with one user name and password, that is, projects 1, 2, 3, and information such as industry regulations and specifications can also be shared among projects. The WPMS system view at this stage is shown in Figure 2.
Definition of 1.2WPMS
In recent years, besides WPMS, many similar concepts have emerged, such as ProjectSpecificWebSite (PSWS), Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), VirtualProjectOffice (Virtual Project Office, VPO), ProjectExtranet (PE), ProjectWeb (PW), ProjectBank (PB), Project Information Management System (PIMS) and DocumentPool (DP), all of which can be understood as a WPMS system. Some representative concepts are summarized here to understand the basic features and functions of WPMS.
(1) Web-based project management system, WPMS. According to Skibniewski, WPMS is an electronic project management system based on Extranet. With the help of extranet, the project information is centrally stored in the system database; Project team members can access the system anytime and anywhere.
(2) Specific project website, PSWS. According to TonyThorpe, PSWS is an electronic project management system, which stores and distributes project information through the Internet and a series of connected web pages. The system provides centralized project data management functions, including information submission, information request, project progress announcement, and obtaining construction specifications, meeting minutes and project photos.
(3)EDMS electronic document management system. DanyHajjar said that EDMS is a tool for users to capture, edit, retrieve, distribute and retrieve all kinds of electronic and paper documents. In EDMS, the general data model of documents is established by establishing three models: enterprise data model, project data model and document data model. On this basis, the document template that enterprises can enjoy is established to realize the management of electronic documents.
(4)VPO Virtual Project Office. According to Joseph. Questore establishes a virtual project office space through the World Wide Web, which enables project team members to "gather" together and exchange project information in time, thus overcoming the obstacles caused by geographical dispersion. At the same time, through user authentication and authority configuration management, the system stability and project data security are ensured.
The above concepts respectively reflect some views on the content, implementation, function and positioning of WPMS. Although the emphasis is different, the main features of WPMS can be extracted from these definitions (see table 1).
To sum up, the following definitions can be given: WPMS is an electronic project management system, which uses the World Wide Web browser as the user interface, transmits data through the Internet, extranet or intranet of the project, and stores the data in the project database; It ensures system stability and project data security through user identity authentication and authority configuration management, and uses database to manage structured information and unstructured information according to user identity and authority, and handles information submission and information request of users. It establishes a virtual office space for geographically dispersed project participants, thus improving the efficiency of project team cooperation and realizing scientific and efficient project management.
Basic Architecture, Key Technologies and Functions of 2WPMS
2. 1 infrastructure
WPMS is a complex collection of application information technology, and its basic system architecture is shown in Figure 3. The system is divided into three layers, namely, Web browser, Web server and database server. Web browser is the interactive interface between users and WPMS; World Wide Web server is the core of WPMS. It receives the customer information request from the World Wide Web browser, processes the request accordingly, and finally feeds back the processing result to the customer to complete the business logic processing of the whole system. The database server is responsible for managing WPMS data and files. The separation of World Wide Web server and database server can realize the independence of business logic and data, and ensure the security of data and the stability of the system.
2.2 Key technologies
From the basic architecture of the system and the content of processing information, WPMS includes the following four key technologies:
(1) World Wide Web Technology. The World Wide Web can be used as a medium for rapid information transmission, and it is the basis for establishing an inter-organizational distributed system. Project participants can use the same management information system on different hardware platforms through the World Wide Web, which is the key technology that affects the professional division of labor and industrial structure adjustment in the global construction industry.
(2) Database technology. Database technology is produced to meet the needs of data management. Database is an organized and shared data set stored in the computer for a long time, which is the basis of establishing WPMS.
The storage, organization, workflow management, user authentication and authority configuration management of engineering project information, as well as user access tracking are all realized through databases and related technologies.
(3) Multimedia technology. Multimedia technology is a computer technology that comprehensively processes various media information, such as text, graphics, images and videos. It connects all kinds of information logically and becomes an interactive system. It can be used to monitor the construction site and accumulate construction experience, and it is also the basis of network video conference.
(4) Information standards. Informatization standard is the fundamental way to solve the "information island" and the basis of data exchange and interoperability between different information management systems. As the key technology of information standard, XML(eXtensibleMarkupLanguage) defines data structure in an open self-description way, which can not only describe data content, but also highlight the description of structure, thus reflecting the relationship between data. Data organized in this way is friendly and operable to both applications and users. The research shows that the related information standards based on XML have great development potential in data exchange and data depth analysis.
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