Excerpt from Construction Cost Keeping and Management: A Treatise for Engineers, Contractors and Superintendents Engaged in the Management of Engineering Construction Construction Cost Keeping and Management has been prepared in response to the request of the publishers for a second edition of Cost Keeping and Management Engineering. The old book, published in 1909 and reprinted in 1916, can hardly be said to be out of date because it confined itself to principles illustrated by a number of practical cost keeping forms and methods but in the last twelve years some new principles of what may be justly called the Science of Management have been discovered and a great many new forms and methods have come into use. Therefore we have endeavored, in preparing the present work, to supplement the original material by what has come out in the evolution of the last twelve years, rejecting very little of the old material. This book, as was stated in the preface to "Cost Keeping and Management Engineering," is intended to assist engineers, contractors and superintendents in reducing construction costs to a minimum. To accomplish this it is necessary to understand the laws or rules of management, and to have daily reports that show the efficiency of the men and machines employed. That there are any scientific laws of management will be denied by many men of the old school, but such a denial cannot be logically maintained. If there is a science of psychology, there must be a science of management, for management is a mental process that follows certain definite laws, obscure and complex at times, but none the less definite when once they are understood. Many an ordinary foreman possesses a fair working knowledge of applied mechanics, having acquired it by observation and experiment; but such a foreman would be far more efficient as a manager if he also had a grasp of the theory of the principles that he applies. For example, it is of great assistance, in planning the organization of a working gang of men, to know well the simple law that Work = Resistance X Distance, so as to apply this law consciously rather than to apply it intuitively as docs the ordinary foreman. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.