Hi Hubert,

I have received the white paper, and it is very interesting, and makes mostly sense to me, there is a couple of issues I would still like to discuss.

Sorry I haven’t replied yet, but work pressures and medical problem has prevented me from answering. however, will discuss this with you soon.

Regards,

Philip

Hi Hubert, Nice to see you here, Guten Abend. Seeing there is no specific subject here, I would like you to put this one in your pipe and smoke it. I was trying to make some time to call you today, but unfortunately time ran out, as I had tio go for a cat-scan, as the project director remarked, ’to find out if I had a brain’. I found an interesting anonomaly today, in terms of time distance planning which confused a lot of people, specifically in senior management. This relates to earthworks. I believe you have seen my diagrams, where cuts and fills are represented by triangles, where the direction of the movement is indicated, in the main by the direction the cut goes to the fill. The main problem is that the cuts and fills is not true linear work, as it happens in layers, over the whole distance, and as such is vertical works. So theoretically it is a vertical rather than a horizontal operation, and as such should be represented by a rectangle. However, Tilos only regnises it as linear, ie. start date, start chainage, and end date/end chainage. so the anonomaly is non-linear activities as opposed to true linear activities. In terms of progress these have to be shown by a horizontal line in terms of progress. However, the program only sees the diagonal line from the so-called start distance/dates, and sets the baseline acordlingly, as well as the progress. The problem is to be able to set an activity as linear, or non linear, and this will obvite this problem, by showing progress horizontaly or at an angle, or even verticlly if necessary. There is even a worst instance where a cut is performed on the side of a slope, and used as fill, where the cut and fill happens in the same distance/chainage, the reason we used triangle originally, how do we represent this? The complexity of the task is great, as we only have two dimensions to present things, and everybody else wants to see it in as many dimensions as possible not realising, that paper is flat and as such two-dimensional. I think this forum is particularly important as we have good minds out there, and maybe someone can come up with a suggestion. Regards, Philip