Projects
Available nowThe job around the code.
A project holds the design basis, the drawings, the programs and the documents, and it knows which phase of the job it is in. The plan comes from the lifecycle rather than from a blank page.
Open ProjectsIn short
How do I keep a control system project's design basis, drawings and documents together?
A LADX project holds the design basis, the drawings, the programs and the documents, and knows which phase of the job it is in. Twenty two design questions are answered once and flow into every document, and the plan is generated from the deliverables the project actually owes rather than typed into a blank page.
The problem
The facts a project runs on live in an email, a kick-off meeting nobody minuted, and one engineer's head. Every document then restates them slightly differently.
What it does
A design basis worth writing once
Twenty-two questions in seven groups: goal and scope, control platform, electrical and environment, safety, operation and performance, compliance and security, acceptance and dates. Every document is written from these rather than from memory.
Filled from documents you already have
Point the onboarding wizard at a URS or a scope of work and it reads the answers out, with the section each one came from. Skip it and come back to it whenever you like.
The lifecycle, pinned to the top
Summary, requirements, design, development, factory test, commissioning, handover, support. Every phase is reachable at any time, and looking at one is separate from moving the project into it.
A plan seeded from the work
One task per deliverable the lifecycle already defines, with an owner, a date, and a status. Each task knows whether the document behind it has been written yet.
Clients, and everything they touch
The client and site sit on the project and flow to every letterhead, title block and document number. Change them once.
What it doesn't do
Listed because you would find out anyway, and finding out later is worse.
- It is a project workspace. Scheduling lives next door in Planner, which does have a Gantt chart; neither does critical path or resource levelling.
- The plan tracks whether a deliverable exists, not whether it is any good. Reviewing is still a person's job.
Questions
- What is a project design basis?
- The facts a project runs on: goal and scope, control platform, electrical and environmental conditions, safety requirements, operation and performance, compliance, and acceptance criteria. Written once, they stop every document restating them slightly differently.
- Can I limit a project to programming only?
- Yes. A project carries the set of deliverables it owes, and the presets run from programming only, three documents, to a full lifecycle of seventeen. Handing somebody writing logic a plan containing a bill of materials is noise they delete seventeen times.
- Does changing the client name update the documents?
- Yes. The client and site sit on the project and flow to every letterhead, title block and document number, so it is changed once rather than found in fifteen files.