Improving Construction Management of an Educational Center by Applying Earned Value Technique

Abstract

Earned value project management is a well-known management system that integrates cost, schedule and technical performance. It allows the calculation of cost and schedule variances and performance indices and forecasts the project cost and schedule duration. The Earned Value concept was conceived by industrial engineers working in American factories over a century ago. This concept improved by the time and in July 1998, the Earned Value Management System became the American National Standards Institute (ANSI/EIA) Standard #748. By concise reports derived from using Earned Value Method (EVM) in the project, the manager is able to have exact information about the project details and also can mitigate the risks in his decisions in critical conditions of the project. It would be an early warning tool for a project control. Consequently, the project could be finished after a short period of time. This paper aims to explore the concepts of earned value method, its methods and metrics, performance measurements and forecasting project progress. In order to compare between EVPM method and traditional methods, the effectiveness of applying EVPM in a real project, construction of an educational center in one of the petrochemical refineries as a case study is explained. Reports derived from using earned value method in the project indicated that the manager was able to have exact information about the project details and also mitigated the risks in his decisions in critical conditions of the project. Consequently, the project was finished after a short period of time.