WORK BARGE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT. This set of applications was designed for a specialized company that operates blue-water pipelaying barges. These programs track the work schedules and accomplishments for hundreds of people per barge, including fitters, laborers, divers, and management. It tracks company employees, visiting management (VIPs), contract workers, and non-U.S.-Citizen local hire workers. It tracks multiple clients simultaneously, including work allocation for each worker proportional to the time spent for each client, and materiels resale accounting. It also tracks and bills for consumables used. The program replaces several hundred paper forms formerly filled out on each barge and faxed via satellite to the home office, where they were manually transcribed several times; this is all replaced with simple data entry into the computer, with any necessary paper forms printed by the computer in the proper format, the data sent via satellite to the home office, which can instantly print duplicate forms if needed, or process the data directly into other programs, such as their existing inventory, invoicing, and payroll programs.

Results: All data now reaches the home office more rapidly, more accurately, and is assimilated into all systems with no transcription errors. There is less record-keeping labor for the barge administrators, and the records they do keep are more accurate.