How engineering data management and system support the main process-oriented functions of a large-scale project

This paper studies the benefits of establishing configuration management pr ocedures and using an engineering data. management systems (EDMS) in a larg e-scale project by dividing the overall effort into successive processes. T hrough the identification of the main functional groups who will use the ED MS, the paper outlines the basic motivations and services provided by such a system to each process during the life-cycle of the project. The implicat ions of strict configuration management on the daily operation of each func tional user group are also discussed. The main argument of the paper is tha t each and every user of the EDMS must act in compliance with the configura tion management procedures to guarantee the overall benefits from such a sy stem. In truly global projects? special emphasis is placed on the managemen t of distributed operations, which sets the flexible and universal access t o all engineering and project related documents: into a crucial role in the overall success of the project. As an example of the given challenge, this paper documents a World Wide Web-based system to manage documents and inte rface in-house document vaults and commercial EDM systems. The underlying e nvironment of the case is that of CERN and the ongoing, decade-long, Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project.