Progress Measurement for varying quantity

Prasath,

The actual measurement must relate with the contract including the latest ammendmenst tot he contract. I don’t know what type of contract you have, re-measure or lump sum???

As you perceive that the length may not reach the baseline quantities, you may highlight this to the client representative. This may involve a variation to the original SOW.

In real practice the actual progress will continue until the activity complete. Whatever issue will be resolve in contratual exercise, say issuance of variation order long after the completion of activities, etc, etc...

I hope this will help.

cheers,

charlie

Presath,

In essence, Charlie’s right. You could also claim a current progress value based on your latest forecast, thereby allowing you to increase your % complete. However, you need to be very confident of your forecast.

In my business, Nuclear Fuel Handling et al., we have to calculate progress value against an unknown quantity all the time, owing to the fact that we are designing the equipment that has only a generally-known functional requirement. There is no detailed knowledge of its physical structure, so we cannot precisely define quantities such as its mass, the number of drawings, 3D models or the volume of metal. The measurement that we tend to use is man-hours, as that is what the cost is based on. Of course, man-hours will change also and the % complete will vary accordingly. Quite how your company wants to deal with the varying progress depends on the company policy. However, we have a client whose reporting structure does not allow us to reduce the progress value. Therefore we have to be extremely careful that we do not over-report our progress and discover next week that our work-scope or remaining time has increased (thereby reducing the progress value). Ultimately, the unit of measurement doesn’t make any difference because the principle is the same. How you deal will it, as it varies, is between yourself and client.

If you are using Earned Value to monitor your project, then it is probably not worth issuing a Baseline Change Control at this time. This is due to the fact that, if you are making the correct level of progress using the 100LM measurement, then your SPI/CPI/BCWP should show you in good light. However, your ETC could be amended to show the reduced cost (assuming that halving the quantity is going to halve the cost/duration.

Hopes this helps.

James.