DAMMAM, 15 June — The NED Engineers Forum (NEDFO) — an organization formed by the alumni of NED Engineering University, Karachi and Dawood Engineering College, Karachi — held a technical seminar at Dhahran International Hotel last week. The technical seminar with two topics was addressed by Dr. Faramarz Rahbar of Aramco who dwelt on “Project Management” and Iftikhar Nadeem of KFUPM who spoke on “Information Technology: Trends & Directions” .

NEDFO President Hussain Haider highlighted the activities of the forum in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Faramarz Rahbar, who holds a Ph.D degree from Iowa State University in Construction Engineering and Management, spoke on project management. Faramarz explained how the use of the worldwide web provided exciting opportunities to enhance project control through access to detailed and pertinent information of the project.

He explained how a project website could be used as a dynamic tool for timely and more accurate cost and schedule forecasts through interactive communication avoiding any delay due to lacunae in the conventional system.

Faramarz said the Internet had facilitated better communication, information search, analysis, processing of data evaluation of alternatives and decision-making.

A web-based project control model referred to as “Project Command and Control Center” can provide users the ability to view the total project on a single screen with hyper links to multiple data bases. He concluded that the application of Internet to project management can result in a more candid and improved communication with the information at the right level and it will contribute to project productivity.

Second speaker Iftikhar Nadeem, a senior consultant at KFUPM, dwelt on the IT Industry Trends and Directions with particular focus on e-business.

He spoke of the key trends and events which would drive new business investments in IT and also spoke about the technology advances and changes which may have the most significant impact on IT development decisions. Iftikhar also dwelt on key business challenges, new business models and structures and e-business evolution.

Shields were presented to both the speakers as a token of honor on behalf of NED Engineers Forum. Iqbal Ahmed Khan expressed thanks on behalf of NEDFO to chief guest Wasim Haider, managing director of Mojbil for his support and partly sponsoring the seminar, a press release issued by NEDFO said.