Expo '92 is the single largest construction project under way in Europe, with 1 ?0 countries participating. The event, which opens in April 1992, is part of the Spanish celebrations centred on the Olympic Games, to be held in Barcelona, and the quincentenary of Columbus' voyage to America.

Of all the buildings under construction, the Sultanate of Oman Pavilion-being built by Balfour Beatty must be one of the most unusual. It is made up of two, 20m-diameter domes named the Dome of Culture and the Dome of Exploration. One dome has a mezzanine floor, underneath which arc located offices and other facilities.

The front entrance to the building has been designed to resemble one of the gates to Muscat. When F.xpo '92 ends the pavilion will be dismantled and shipped out to Oman for re-erection.

Balfour Beatty's long experience of working in Oman earned it a place on the tender list j for the project but it won the contract in ] competition with other UK contractors. Its special activities unit is using Plantrac. a PC-based project management system, to help it plan the construction schedule and monitor progress.

Work started on site last April for completion by Christmas with exhibits scheduled to be installed early next year. A lot of time has been spent organising the numerous work packages and procuring steelwork and the very intricate GRP panels that form the domes.

All the materials for the structure were sourced in the UK and shipped out for erection on site as a kit of parts. The first piece of steelwork was erected on site towards the end of June.

"We used Plantrac in the procurement stages of the project because it provided us with the best tool to get all the works  packages and materials together." says Peter Jevons. chief planning engineer with the special activities unit. "We used a relatively • simple system of a single-line critical path with 11 key activities on it for each package of work.

 "We worked backwards from the construction programme by establishing a date when we required a particular trade to start on site.  From there we established what mobilisation and manufacturing periods were required for  that package commencing with the time re-quired for design and approvals and. prior to  that, the period we considered essential for  tendering for that work package.

'"Preceding that, we needed to account for the time required for the initial release of information from our design team fom which we were able to put together the original enquiry package. Thus, working backwards from the start date on site, we can  monitor all the stages once we have our procurement programme set up and we can quickly establish an overall strategy and plan the total procurement for the project. "The beauty of Plantrac is that it is so  flexible".