Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Cost Management - 4 part series

Our new cost management 4 part series follows on from our four part benchmarking series published in Feb-April of this year. For those that missed the series, each blog entry can be found below:

Part 1 - Data Capture and Quality Control
Part 2 - Control Quantities and Design
Part 3 - Utilising data captured
Part 4 - Using benchmarks to estimate new projects

As usual, the target versus actual of 3 x 4 part series to be published over Feb-May didn't quite occur but I hope that the 4 entries on benchmarking have proven useful to newcomers of our software. Of course, +Graham Eldridge  has been maintaining the rage with his posts on specific features to be released Friday when UniPhi 12 goes live, but time has finally allowed me to get back to my goal of a 4 part cost management series. Like the benchmarking series, this blog series will focus on the challenges people face when managing costs and will link this to some of the ways software can help. Unlike specific feature blogs, its aim is to create a conversation around what are the challenges, what is best practice and how may best practice be disrupted to be even better practice.

Anyone who's been on a project management course will have been introduce to the dreaded iron triangle of time cost and scope. Sacrificing one allows for expansion of the other two.

Source:http://ygraph.com/chart/2092
Of course the field of project management has evolved well past this simple management philosophy (as an example, the adding of quality in the middle provides a first broadening of a PM's scope of work) but it still isn't a bad place to start when discussing some of the key cost management challenges. In this blog series we will look at 4 key challenges cost consultants and project managers face when managing expenditure on projects. The four challenges are:


  • Adding value to the value management conversation
  • Managing change
  • Estimates at completion and earned value
  • Cash flow
Over the next month or so I will be publishing detailed entries for each of the four points above. Stay tuned and lets hope one month doesn't become three!