# Historical Data Manager for Construction
## Overview
Manage legacy construction data from archives, old systems, and historical records. Extract, clean, normalize, and migrate data into modern formats for analysis and benchmarking.
## Business Case
Construction companies accumulate decades of project data in various formats:
- Paper records scanned to PDF
- Legacy database exports (Access, dBase, FoxPro)
- Old spreadsheet formats (Lotus 1-2-3, early Excel)
- Proprietary software exports
- Project closeout documentation
This skill helps extract value from historical data for:
- Cost benchmarking and trending
- Productivity analysis over time
- Risk pattern identification
- Estimating improvement
## Technical Implementation
### Historical Data Extractor
```python
from dataclasses import dataclass, field
from typing import List, Dict, Any, Optional
from datetime import datetime
from pathlib import Path
import pandas as pd
import re
import json
@dataclass
class HistoricalRecord:
project_id: str
project_name: str
year: int
data_type: str # cost, schedule, labor, material
original_format: str
extracted_data: Dict[str, Any]
quality_score: float
notes: List[str] = field(default_factory=list)
class HistoricalDataManager:
"""Manage extraction and normalization of historical construction data."""
def __init__(self, archive_path: str):
self.archive_path = Path(archive_path)
self.records: List[HistoricalRecord] = []
self.normalization_rules = self._load_normalization_rules()
def scan_archive(self) -> Dict[str, int]:
"""Scan archive and categorize files by type."""
file_types = {}
for file_path in self.archive_path.rglob('*'):
if file_path.is_file():
ext = file_path.suffix.lower()
file_types[ext] = file_types.get(ext, 0) + 1
return file_types
def extract...