The program was opened by Engr. Jawaid Inam, General secretary of NEDFO, who invited Master Sohaib Rizwan, a young Hafiz, for recitation from the Holy Quran. Engr. Hussain Haider, President of NEDFO, gave a brief description of the activities of NEDFO in Saudi Arabia.Engr. Rizwan Ahmed gave a short introduction of the seminar highlighting the two topics of the day.

The first speaker, Dr. Faramarz Rahbar, who holds a Ph.D. from Iowa State University in Construction Engineering and Management with over 25 years of experience in Project Controls, was introduced to the audience by Engr. Misbahul Islam Sabri.

Speaking on the topic Dr. Faramarz explained how the use of the World Wide Web provides 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 hierarchy of the conventional system. Having said that engineering and construction Projects have always faced delays and overruns in the past, Dr. Faramarz added that the Internet has created a unique opportunity for better communication collaboration, information search, analysis, processing of data evaluation of alternatives and decision making. Among the most dramatic implications of the Web to the field of project control is to envision a model in which virtually all the corporate information is stored on a Web Server. 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 hyperlinks to multiple data bases.Dr. Faramarz concluded that the application of Internet to project management can result in a more candid and improved communications with the information at the right level at the right time and it will positively impact project productivity, employee empowerment, increasing cost/schedule consciousness and considerable savings can be achieved in time and cost by implementing the concepts as outlined in his paper . At the end he informed the audience that his presentation could be downloaded by visiting:  http://www.geocities.com/scheduling2001/webpage.ppt

The second speaker, Engr. Iftikhar Nadeem, who holds a Master’s degree in System Engineering from KFUPM and who is a Senior Consultant , eBusiness Solutions at KFUPM, was introduced by Engr. Naseeruddin. Engr. Iftikhar highlighted the IT Industry Trends and Directions with a particular focus on eBusiness. He spoke of the key trends and events which would drive new business investments in ITand the technology advances and changes which would have the most significant impact on IT development decisions and how the organizations could harness and exploit IT despite ever-increasing complexity and volatility. He explained the