Case Studies

Case Study – Custom Project Tracking Software By 
Vikrant Nadkarni,

Scadex Business Solutions, LLC 

Ewing Engineers

Background: Ewing Engineers is an Engineering contractor doing electrical and construction projects for several large companies. Some of their customers include, Merck Pharmaceuticals, NASA and Averon.  At one point in time B&D works on 20 running projects, with an approximate total budget of 50 million dollars. Apparently, there is no system in place, which keeps track of several project variables before Scadex built their Project Management software.    

Problem: Growing business and increasing number of projects made it difficult to manage several projects at a time. The senior executives wanted to keep track project profitability. The project manager wanted to keep projects under budget, which includes keeping track of project invoices, project receivables, employee time and project changes. 

Scope: Build an automated system for project management purposes. The system will incorporate all the processes over the period of a project’s life. This includes, writing a proposal, tracking the rejected proposals, converting an accepted proposal into a project, tracking several project specific variables (payables, receivables, change orders, PO, invoices, and scheduling) and finally, making decision support tools and generating reports. The output should facilitate decision-making abilities for the project managers and senior executives. The output will have queries and reports with drill-down capabilities. The database should be in 3NF and it should maintain referential integrity, for example, it should block a creation of a receivable against a project, which does not exist in the project database. The software should be error proof and it should have all necessary error checks.  The interface should be intuitive and user friendly. Also, create the security features as addressed in the Security section.