Project management is an evolving profession. Originally considered part and parcel of the design function, the practice of project management has evolved into a separate classification of professional practice. Professional project managers of today use sophisticated computer programs to achieve in seconds what took days to accomplish and evaluate in the past.

Cost estimating and project scheduling have become key elements in assuring on-budget and on-time delivery of final projects. Key to those is how well the project manager addresses environmental issues that arise. Those issues need to be considered from the planning stages of a project to the end-of-life stages of the project and the disposal of the remnants of the project decades in the future.