The Overall Design Of Internet-based Project Management Information System

Due to the multiple professional disciplines involved in construction process, the complicated technologies used in construction process and the application of new techniques, project management is a complicated and arduous task. Project success relies heavily on timely transfer of information among owners, project managers, contractors, inspectors and designers. Despite the explosive growth of the information disposal, storage and exchange technologies, there are many limitations with the current use of information technology in construction. Completely independent organizations using different hardware platforms can now share the same system over the Internet. Anyone anywhere can provide or receive information anytime from anywhere almost instantaneously. This study focuses on the overall design of Internet-based Project Management Information System which is appropriate to the current situation of our country.The main contents are:1) The paper analyzes the research efforts by academia and commercial products for internet-based project management home and abroad, the objective consumers, and the barriers to the application of Internet-based Project Management Information System. All these contribute to the overall design of the Internet-based PMIS.2) The paper tries to reengineer the business processes which are commonly used in our country and make them adapted to the Internet-based PMIS. On the basis of the market analysis and business process reengineering, the functional structure and the three-tier system architecture are proposed.3) By comparing the new limiting factors, which influence the organization structure, demanded by the Internet-based PMIS with the inefficiency of the traditional hierarchical organization structure, the paper points out that the traditional organization structure is not suitable for the system and then the concept of virtual organization is introduced. After analyzing several classic definitions of virtual organization, organization structure design based on virtual organization theory is brought forward. Finally, the paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of virtual organization.