Software for building services.

Finding the appropriate software may prove a difficult and time consuming exercise. There are few opportunities to see what's on offer in the growing market of building services software packages. Expenditure on IT has remained strong despite the harsh economic climate of recent years and there has been a growing expectation that software packages should be independently quality assured. Consequently accreditation schemes for software are now beginning to emerge and are likely to feature increasingly in the years ahead.This guide is concerned exclusively with software for the building services industry available in the United Kingdom. As with previous editions of this guide the number of entries has maintained steady growth and this edition reflects increased prominence of health and safety, and quality assurance related software.   Details of each package are as given by the suppliers with a small amount of editing to maintain consistency. It should be noted that many of the programs cany out functions which would place them under more than one subject category. In such cases the program is presented in the category which best expresses its principal function. It is therefore recomm.ended that readers make full use of the accompanying subject index.