PLANTRAC-CORONET

Cost/Schedule Integration

PLANTRAC-CORoNET provides a powerful but simple to use system for project cost estimating, cost monitoring and cost control.

Completing a project on time, with quality and within budget is important to every company. The achievement of these objectives is made difficult by a variety of factors and many projects end up as failures. There are many aspects of a project that can contribute to failure such as inaccurate estimating and budgeting, improper planning, ineffecient use of resources to name a few. A major aspect for failure however is lack of control. Usually insufficient control because of the inappropriate nature of the information available for control purposes.

Lack of control usually starts from the very beginning of the project - the moment the estimate is started and the quotation  concluded. The methods of estimating and the manner in which the job is carried out usually have little in common - therefore, being unrelated, there is little control information that can be derived from it. The estimate and/or budget is normally calculated from volume and time. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach and indeed may be the only way it could have been produced at an early stage. However if nothing further is done in relating it to the job process, it remains worthless in terms of control information.

PLANTRAC-CORoNET provides the means to turn this original data into meaningful control information. PLANTRAC-CORoNET does this in a simple and straightforward way to further enhance the use of the available information. Consequently, constant reference may be made to budgets, actual costs, progress and forecasts and control may be exercised at the earliest possible times.

In summary, after the initial estimate is made, the job plan (i.e. the activities involved, their logical relationships and resources required) should be produced. The job plan should then be costed so that the costs of carrying out the work matches the initial estimate. Thereafter, the plan is kept up-to-date with actual progress and actual costs involved. PLANTRAC-CORoNET is then available to provide control information in a variety of ways to compare how the job is performing to the intended plan and budget.

PLANTRAC-CORoNET is designed to work in conjunction with PLANTRAC-OUTLOOK as an integrated system. In other words there is no duplication of data input. However, for information integrity it is operated as two discrete systems. A word or two about information integrity before we go further. It has become fashionable to talk in terms of systems being seamless and systems being dynamic and systems being multi-user and so on. In some applications these requirements can make very good sense and is desirabe. In other applications, and we include project costing and control as one of these, it is highly dangerous and very undesirable. Why?. The planning, monitoring and control of projects are two separate though interlinked topics. Interlinked not just between the two aspects but totally intertwined within itself. The update of one activity has major implications on a number of other activities . The two major topics are:

1. How best to do the job from a cost versus budget perspective . i.e. Performance against budget ;

and

2. How best to do the job from an operational point of view. i.e. The schedule.

Both aspects are vital for timliness, quality and profitability. However, is the information for both aspects available to the same source from the very beginning to the conclusion? Highly unlikely. Therefore if one is updating one part, for example the schedule, at what point is performance and cost information valid?. The only point at which cost information becomes meaningful is after schedules are updated, re-calculated and a new finalised forecast made. PLANTRAC-OUTLOOK advises this sensible approach, which is to only update the cost database after work on the schedule is completed.

Numerous management reports (Tabular and Graphical) may be produced including Budget/Actual/Planned, BCWS/BCWP/ACWP/BTC/FTC and Earned Value in a WBS structure for control to be exercised and corrective action taken