Scheduling & Cost Control

Course Information

Learn How To

• Use the work breakdown structure to develop a network diagram
• Calculate schedules using PERT/CPM
• Identify, assign, and tabulate resource – requirements
• Predict costs and work time using specific levels and estimate types
• Develop a time-phased project budget
• Plan for contingencies and anticipate variations
• Predict future project performance based on historical data
• Monitor changes and close projects on time

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Course Synopsis

Develop effective measures for scheduling and controlling projects as you put the tools of project management to work. In this course, you will focus on managing the constraints you face in any project: limits on time, human resources, materials, budget, and specifications. Discover proven ways to work within your identified constraints, without letting predefined limits curtail creativity or innovation.

From the opening moments, you will get hands-on experience evaluating projects in terms of their costs and schedules, and identify ways to improve project estimating and control from the large-scale order-of-magnitude estimates down to the bottom-up detailed evaluations. In today's modern project environment, project managers must incorporate monitoring, controlling, analysing, and reporting costs and interpret the meaning of earned-value data. This course covers those skills. Exercises and case studies throughout the course feature scenarios that help hone these skills, and a comprehensive toolkit provides practical field guidance. In addition, you will receive a copy of a special edition of Precedence Diagramming: Successful Scheduling in the Team Environment by Carl L. Pritchard, edited to focus on the specific demands of the scheduling environments. Jeffrey Pinto's landmark text, Essentials of Project Control, is also provided.

Discover a number of sophisticated tools and techniques that you can use to manage time and costs effectively on every type of project. This is one of the program’s most popular courses, and the online environment enables you to take the class at your own pace and on your own schedule.

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Course Topics

1. Needs and Requirements Overview

• Overview of the project management life cycle
• The triple constraints
• Planning tools
• Project requirements—a review
• The work breakdown structure—a review
• Challenges in scheduling and cost control

2. Resource Allocation and Estimating

• Using estimates for scheduling and cost control
• The basic rules of estimating
• Levels of estimating and estimate types
• Top-down vs. bottom-up
• Order of magnitude
• Budget
• Definitive
• Six estimating methodologies
• Identifying controllable costs
• Resource
• Material
• Direct
• Indirect
• Planning for risk with contingency
• Building the project resource pool
• Using resources to build estimates
• The responsibility matrix
• Time-controlled estimates
• Resource-limited estimates

3. Scheduling

• Network scheduling
• Validating schedules
• Arrow diagrams and precedence diagrams
• Basic scheduling and network calculations
• Advanced precedence relationships and the critical path
• Alternative constraints
• Gantt and milestone charts

4. The Baseline

• Establishing baselines
• Creating and using reserves
• Time and cost trade-offs
• Using the least-cost method in trade-off analysis
• Resource levelling
• Resource smoothing for effective cost control

5. Managing Change Within the Project

• The process of control
• Identifying sources of change
• Screening change
• Updating the project plan
• Communicating change

6. Evaluation and Forecasting

• Causes of variances
• Establishing the “data date” for evaluation
• Conducting trend analyses
• Components of the project audit
• Considerations in establishing a monitoring system
• Earned value
• Advanced earned-value forecasting tools

7. The Exit Strategy

• Steps in completing the project
• Controlling costs and schedule late in the project
• Scope verification
• Contract closeout
• Administrative closure

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PMBOK® knowledge areas:

• Project Scope Management
• Project Time Management
• Project Cost Management
• Project Risk Management
• Project Procurement Management

Professional Development Units (PDU): 28.0

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