Management information system (MIS) for consultants : engaged in road construction / rehabilitation work in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The construction of roads has become a major construction industry in the country from early eighties. Huge sums of money is being spent on Construction / Rehabilitation of roads. The Consultative work, ie Feasibility Studies, Construction Supervision, etc. is done by foreign companies jointly with local companies, who take the contract from the RDA. This exercise is to identify the Management Information System (MIS) adopt by them and the problems they encounter in order to develop a suitable MIS. Management of information by integrating various technologies to help the managers in making decisions has become popular in the present day world. Initial stages, the MIS were developed in the fields of marketing, manufacturing and production. This can be extended to the Consultative work of the road construction industry too. With the advancement of the computer hardware and software, computer based MIS help the Consultants to achieve the ir tasks effectively. Information collected from the individual engineers and the project reports produced by Consultants for six large road projects in Sri Lanka were analyzed in this document. The results obtained indicate that a computer based MIS can be developed for the Consultants engaged in road construction/rehabilitation works in Sri Lanka and the Road Development Authority (RDA) has sufficient institutional capacity to provide information required by the Consultants. This study leads to further research on detail design of the MIS and it's sub-systems