Managing conservation projects to avoid catastrophes Available to Purchase

A conservation project can fail through political or financial mistakes more often than from technical ones. To help a project engineer be more effective in managing a building conservation programme, a graphical illustration is used to describe the interaction of technology, politics and finance. It indicates that factors external to the modern engineer's technical concerns will have a bearing on the project's viability. And these factors may have long lead-in times. If the presence and nature of these factors is ignored then failure may appear sudden to someone concentrating on the technical issue alone. For successful conservation, this political and financial context needs not only to be monitored but also influenced. Although a simple model, it serves to warn that a surplus of any of these influences can be as damaging as a shortage. An apparently successful project may literally go over the edge suddenly unless this overview is considered: either the technology may not be appropriate or the other factors may terminate a technically sound, but one-dimensional approach.