The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) builds and maintains several hundreds of concrete structures ranging from highways to bridges and tunnels. During the building process, the concrete material provided by contractors must be randomly tested several times a day to make sure that the quality of the concrete meets the project specifications as provided in the contract. During that process, several samples are taken from the field to the lab for testing.
   The purpose of this project was to develop a relational concrete database management system. The main objective of the system is to generate payment sheets for the concrete contractors, based on their adherence to projects specs (mix designs), standards and performance. In addition, the system was to provide an extensive and comprehensive list of statistical and analytical reports intended to evaluate and access the impact of mix designs specifications. The system is also used to track results of contracts (e.g. what was the performance on a contract or contracts), investigate what influences the quality of the products, i.e. what is the effect of coarse aggregate on concrete quality, what is the variance of concrete testing of a particular technician, etc.
   The system is a two-Tier Client/Server application developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 COM technology. ADO and MDAC 2.6 were used as database connectivity and SQL Server 7.0 was the backend. The entire design was developed using Object-Oriented techniques and data-driven through a data-dictionary. The application uses several canned complex reports written in Crystal Reports 8.0. The system is currently used on a LAN, by PANYNJ engineers on a daily basis.