Even if you have just begun your career, you should understand project control.

• In Chapter 3 we considered engineering projects which required the combined efforts of a number of professionals. Most projects do. We saw that these projects, even when small, are surprisingly complex in technical relations between contributors. These relations are generally much too involved to be coordinated directly by the project engineer alone. Instead, the contributors on an effective project team make it their business to see that their work is integrated into the project as a whole (with special attention to interfaces with the work of others).

In this way, from a technical point of view, the project goal is accomplished in a reasonably optimum way. The team's solution does not contain unresolved conflicts between its various parts. The result will be a practical design or a useful development or a sound recommendation whatever the object of engineering effort was.

Now it is the activity of the engineers and their use of resources which consume project funds and time, so time and money scheduling on a project cannot be separated from technical thinking and activity. It is a common mistake to try to distinguish between the two, but technical decisions are inherently time and money decisions, too.

Hence, the effort to control a project that is, to direct it so that its technical goal will be accomplished efficiently within time and money schedules must be shared by all members of the project team, just as...