Predicting Schedule and Cost Elements' Variation for EPC Projects in Alberta

Abstract

Planning and making advance decisions for an Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) project is very critical because of the complexity of the project and the equal importance of major areas within engineering, procurement and construction. However, EPC projects, particularly in Alberta, have suffered from variances (or overruns) in cost and schedule in the last decade. Therefore, predicting an EPC project’s outcome to a certain degree of accuracy in terms of cost and schedule, based on historic data, could add value to EPC business. The research presented in this paper has two objectives. First, it identifies areas of major influence to the final project cost by ranking the generic EPC schedule elements that have been developed by the Construction Industry Institute (CII). Second, it analyzes historical project information and shows the relationships between variances that may occur during the project’s life cycle to predict the cost outcome of an EPC project.