A powerful concept of control, including very systematic scheduling and monitoring even computer-aided on large projects has been worked out over the last few years. Its most interesting form for us is called PERT (program evaluation and reporting technique). We will briefly look at it here as an excellent specific illustration of the controlling measures discussed above, and a useful technique in itself.

First let us review briefly to bring out another idea: engineering projects vary widely in money involved, time needed, and numbers of people. In essence a project is a group of interrelated activities which can add up to provide for some specific want. We have seen that it is guided and controlled in terms of specifications, time, and money.

Now the organization and procedures discussed in Chapter 3 (and so far in this chapter) pertain to projects small enough to be done by one team typically two to six engineers. The project team may be a little larger in some cases, and it could have supporting personnel like draftsmen, technicians, secretarial workers, consultants, and others. We use the term "project engineer" to mean the leader of such a team. Most of the rest of the book will apply explicitly to teams of this kind, although the book is generally applicable to the entire range of project situations.

You will find, however, that many projects are larger than one team can handle. For example, some space projects involve hundreds of professional people. (The term "project engineer" is sometimes...