A New Project Scheduling Control Method Based on Activity Quantities

Abstract

The traditional Earned Value Management (EVM) suffers in many theoretical weaknesses. The improved Earned Schedule Method (ESM) and Earned Duration Management (EDM) still adopt the basis of Planned Value (PV) and Earned Value (EV) for evaluating the overall schedule performance. They tend to mislead the manager’s conception of de facto schedule performance. To resolve the abovementioned problems of traditional schedule control methods, this paper proposes a new method, namely the Quantity-based Project Schedule Control Model (Q-PSCM), which adopts the concepts of EDM, but calculates the project schedule performance based on ‘activity quantities’ of the critical path instead of the overall ‘activity values’ in the traditional EVM. The quantity information is used to compute the project’s ‘Estimate to Complete (ETC)’ duration using critical path method. The overall project schedule performance index is evaluated based on the information of current schedule, project ETC duration and project planned duration. The result of case study shows that the proposed Q-PSCM can evaluate the project schedule performance more effectively and provide a more useful and effective tool for schedule control of construction projects.