Peter BovisFunctional Manager| Martin MariettaLakewood, Co, United States
I have recently been brought on to a project to remove an old bridge and put in a new one. It is not a large project ~3MM and I am not the project manager, but my role is to evaluate and monitor the capital for this project. Looking for some guidance (template) to accomplish this while not being a part of the team to put together any part of the project. I do have access to the MS Project (gantt) and general budgetary numbers, but not a part of the functional team.
This is a new perspective for me as my past projects have been to build the project (scope - completion) to demo only and turn over to "new build" team when that task has been completed.
Thank you in advance for any guidance.
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Peter RapinSubject Matter Expect; Project Delivery| Independent ConsultantOntario, Canada
I suggest you take a look at S-Curves which is a graphical presentation of accumulated data over time.
You are looking at monitoring capital over the length of the project.
1) plot cost over time based on the initial estimates and Gantt chart
2) plot actual costs over time
3) plot earned value over time
In an ideal situation the curves are identical at any given point. In reality there will be gaps which need to be addressed. The S-Curve can also be used to predict the future (project completion). Not only will it be an indication as to where you are today but also where you will be on completion. Cautionary note: don't assume things will get better over time. Trends typically continue unless/until something is done to recover.
You can read up on S-Curves in PMI documentation. Manuy of the Project Management software will generate S-Curves including, I think, MS Project. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Take a look to Earned Value Management, mainly the PMI´s standard on the matter. In my personal experience this is the domain where is more "easy" to apply the method. Saving Changes...
EVM would be the way to go, but you'll need to have a bottom-up budget for the project such that as specific work packages are completed you'd be able to compare the actual costs of their delivery against their budgeted costs. This means you'd need actual cost reports at that level of detail as well. You'd also need a project schedule which makes it easy to determine which work packages should have been completed by a given point in time. Without any of these, EVM will be quite challenging to use...
