Author: Jinxing Cheng
Department of Civil and Environmental engineering
Stanford University
Abstract
PSL was proposed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to exchange manufacturing process information. While most data exchange standards, such as STEP [49] and IAI’s IFC [46], deal primarily with product data, PSL is designed specifically for process information [67, 80]. In this chapter, we explore the applicability of PSL for the exchange of project management data [25]. Following the discussion of the language is an elaboration of how to exchange information among project management applications using PSL. A distributed data integration framework is proposed and prototyped. Two illustrative example projects are employed to demonstrate that information can be successfully exchanged through the prototype system. Conflicts appear in a variety of forms, arise due to different reasons, and occur frequently in many construction projects. It takes a great deal of time for project personnel to resolve various conflicts. This chapter proposes a formal mechanism to detect conflicts of project information arising from different sources. The implemented prototype has been successfully tested on a few example projects. In addition to consistency checking, the potential application of PSL in constraint scheduling is also explored. Large, complex projects often involve many constraints. It usually takes a significant amount of time for schedulers to ensure that a schedule meets all constraints. This chapter proposes a method to express constraints in PSL and to check whether a project schedule meets constraints. An example is provided to demonstrate that PSL has the potential to ensure conformity of project schedules to scheduling constraints.
Keywords: Process Specification Language (PSL), Project Management Applications
