In this paper we address the problem of building tools for improving the software engineering process by taking advantage of artificial intelligence techniques. More specifically, we provide a representation of the evolution of a software project by means of temporal logics. Such a representation is the basis for the construction of tools for the control and management of a software project. A system for Access and Version Control (SCAV) provides a suitable test bed for our approach. In the paper we present the formalization of the history of a software project developed under SCAV, and we show how several kinds of functionalities can be easily realized. The formalization is built within the framework of the event calculus in such a way that every step of the project development determined by the execution of a SCAV operation is described as an event in the calculus. We present an implementation of the system in PROLOG, which allows for a direct and natural formulation of the event calculus rules.