Using Process Specification Language For Project Information Exchange

Peter Kitson

ISBN : -

Order a printed copy of this book from Amazon --UNAVAILABLE--


Cover Design - Using Process Specification Language For Project Information Exchange
  

For your free electronic copy of this book please verify the numbers below. 

(We need to do this to make sure you're a person and not a malicious script)

Numbers

 



Sample Chapter From Using Process Specification Language For Project Information Exchange
     Copyright © Jinxing Cheng, Kincho H. Law



ABSTRACT


There are many project scheduling and management programs employed in the construction industry. Standards-based translation is one way to achieve interoperability. This study evaluates the applicability of the Process Specification Language (PSL) for exchanging project information among different applications. PSL has been initiated by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and is emerging as a standard exchange language for process information in the manufacturing industry. In this paper, we explore how PSL can be extended for exchanging project information for construction applications.

1. INTRODUCTION

As the use of information technology increases in the construction industry, the capability of software applications to interoperate has become increasingly important. A construction project usually involves volume of project information from different sources. There are many construction applications that could be employed in a construction project. For example, as shown in Figure 1, different members of a project team may use Primavera Project Planner (P3)TM or Microsoft ProjectTM to schedule the project, ViteTM to simulate the project organization, Timberline’s Precision EstimatingTM to estimate project cost, and 4D Viewer (McKinney and Fischer 1998) to view the progress of construction. In a distributed but concurrent engineering environment, information interoperability plays a significant role in project management.

There have been many ontology standards, such as STEP, IFC and aecXML, which aim to provide interoperability among different applications. Most of the existing ontology standards, however, focus more on product data rather than process information. Process Specification Language (PSL) is one such emerging standard proposed by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) that is designed specifically to exchange process information among manufacturing applications. This study explores the applicability of using PSL as an interchange standard for construction project management applications.