Cost Loading the Schedule

Hi Suresh,

A very easy & quick way would be to create a resource
for the cost, assign this resource to all relevant cost
activities and load the respective cost values to the
assigned activites. However, though this is quick, it
does not take care of the categorisation of costs.
Therefore, a better way, though longer and more time
consuming, would be to create a Cost breakdown structure
(CBS) based on the nature of activities of the project,
create cost accounts accordingly and then assign the
values. This would give a better breakdown of costs for
the baseline, which in turn would help better cost
monitoring and controls.

On your other question, any schedule can be modified.
It all depends on what kind of modifications you intend
to make and the relationships that would be affected.
One good approach would be to focus on the critical areas
of the project and give enough flexibility to those
activities so that in future, any modifications to those
would not be to your disadvantage.

Happy Planning.....

Ramesh

Hi Suresh,

Easy step to load the same, which drastically reduces the time than directly loading in Primavera....

Create a resource called cost with cost account..

select all the activities (skip the activities which u don want to be cost loaded) assign the resource "cost" with a unit of 0.00 and with cost account, to all of the selected activities by a sinlge clik..

Export the same as WK1 or Excel file...

Open the WK1 or Excel file, enter the cost for each activty in WK1 or Excel (Wud be pretty faster than entering in P3)...U can change the cost account code in Excel / WK1 itself, even u can create a new cost account of similar number of characters.. Save and Export the same to P3..Run it...

Now, open and check, the same would have get updated with less time effort...(The cost account code u have created in the Excel/WK1 also would be updated in the Cost Account Directory, Open the same and just the Description for the same)

Cheers

Venkat

Suresh

You said ;The specs requires to have the schedule cost loaded and get payed by the monthly updates.
If I am right, the monthly interim payment will base on the % accom vs. cost , then to make it easier to track is to use EV earn value approach.
Uly

Thanks for all your help. Ulysses what is Earn Value approach. Is it to bill the owner the difference between previous month payment and current updated schedule for the month. Please brief on how it works.

suresh,

You can compare cost and work perform from the previous data date or baseline , this approach will differ from conventional type of cost control, EVA is considered as three dimentional tool, meaning, both cost and performance of your work will be considered.

uly

Hi Suresh,

You follow the advise of Jaya and Ramesh to cost-load your schedule and found it really helpful. For easy referencing of your BOQ against your activities in P3 (for billing purposes), be sure to group your BOQ pay items and tie it up to an activity on your schedule.

As for Uly’s EVA or Earned Value Management (EVM as other use it), it is the continuous comparison between the planned value, earned value and actual value of an activity or group of activities on a particular reporting period for effective planning, statusing, and forecasting which is critical to the success of all projects.

Cheers,

Burley