The modern Russian labor market dictates new requirements for the qualifications of project management managers in the investment and construction sector. The leading job and staff search site, HeadHunter, requires to have a Project Management Institute certificate in every third qualification condition. Foreign standards are actively supplanting “domestic rules of the game”. The relevance of this study is contained in the answer to the question: is the body of knowledge on project management applicable to the modern construction industry or is it just “a fashion trend” of senior management who wants to have the “Project Management Professional” certificate that is in demand abroad? This paper contains an analysis of significant and “linear” investment and construction projects for the Russian Federation on the structural assessment of key indicators: time, content, and money. This triad of constraints is reflected in the project management body of knowledge as being most susceptible to change during the project life cycle. The main idea of the analysis is to look at and evaluate the deviation of the values contained in the design and estimation documentation at the “input”, i.e. at the pre-investment stage, and at the “output”, i.e. at the stage of putting the object into operation.