Project Controls Open Standard

Collaborative work -n-progress contributed by members and experts from across the community cadre.

The Project Controls Open Standard brings together practical project controls knowledge in one free, openly accessible framework—helping you and your team understand good practice and apply it to everyday project challenges.Building on Planning Planet’s community heritage, it is being developed collaboratively with contributions from experienced practitioners. It connects the disciplines of planning, cost, risk, reporting and governance, showing how they work together to support better decisions and project delivery.

“Open” means free to read and learn from, open to contributions and challenge, and welcoming to everyone, whatever their professional affiliation. The aim is to complement and connect established guidance from across the profession as well as recognised professional organisations.

As we introduce the concept through ProjectControls.com, three messages explain what we are building and how you can get involved:

• Built by the Community, for the Community — practical knowledge shaped by people who use project controls.

• Designed to Align, Not Compete — a shared framework that connects good practice across professional disciplines and affiliations.

• Help Us Shape What Comes Next — an invitation to explore the content, challenge its assumptions and contribute your experience.

Read it. Challenge it. Use it. Improve it.

Reading the Reference Project examples

The Reference Project provides a common scope, 24-month duration, 50.0m CU authorisation and fixed public opening. Worked cases use stated reporting snapshots and deliberately simplified assumptions. A local package, measured subset or alternative scenario is not automatically the whole project. Carry values forward only when a section explicitly continues the same case; retain its cut-off, scope and assumptions.

CU means neutral Cost Units; m CU means million Cost Units. Physical accomplishment is measured against the completion criterion defined for the work. Installed, inspected, tested and accepted are separate evidence states where the delivery process distinguishes them. State the relevant criterion beside each percentage, and use the same scope and cut-off when comparing progress, dates, cost and risk.