A claiming scheme is a formula used to record partial progress of installed quantities. The installation sequence is broken down by steps or milestones with each being assigned a completion percentage based on the level of effort required. This scheme allows progressive tracking of work as it advances, rather than waiting until all work is complete.
Claiming schemes are especially useful when work is completed over multiple activities or phases. For example, an installation might involve material handling, assembly, finalization, and quality verification. By defining these steps in advance and assigning appropriate weightings, progress can be reported incrementally as each step is completed.
Claiming schemes:
Allow you to track your claiming in one central location
Reduce your need for individual side spreadsheets
Improve transparency for which portions of work have been completed
Keep claiming consistent with a clear breakout of quantities reserved for specific activities
Communicate actual work steps to field teams when completing their plan
Quantity tracking and claiming are foundational to accurate cost and performance reporting. Completed quantities drive:
Earned budget
Overall percent complete
Forecasted cost at completion
Delaying progress reporting until all steps are finished can hide issues and delay visibility of potential schedule or cost impacts. For this reason, claiming is typically performed at short intervals, such as daily or weekly, to provide up-to-date insight into project performance.
Accurate progress measurement at short intervals allows teams to identify negative trends early and respond in a timely manner. Claiming schemes support this by structuring work into measurable portions that can be reported incrementally. By assigning each step a percentage based on relative effort, progress reporting more accurately reflects work performed, rather than defaulting to an all-or-nothing approach.
Claiming schemes are applied to activities or commodities based on project configuration. They are typically organized by discipline or commodity type, allowing teams to standardize how progress is measured across similar work.
In Plan, each discipline or commodity type includes a default claiming scheme consisting of a single step representing 100% completion.
While this provides a starting point, most workflows require more detailed schemes that break work down into multiple steps for incremental progress tracking.
It is also common to define multiple claiming schemes within the same discipline or commodity type. Different types of work often require different step structures to accurately reflect how progress is performed and measured.
A well-designed claiming scheme breaks work down into a small number of meaningful steps that reflect how the work is actually performed in the field. Each step should represent a distinct phase of progress and be assigned a percentage based on the relative effort required.
As a best practice:
Use three to five steps to balance visibility with simplicity
Define steps that can be completed within a short reporting interval (such as a week)
Assign percentages based on level of effort, not just sequence
Make sure all steps total 100%
Claiming schemes can also be aligned with scheduling and reporting structures through associations such as schedule groups or activity ID formats. This helps ensure that progress tracking is consistent with how work is planned and reported.
After claiming schemes are defined, they can be applied to WBS phase codes or components, depending on your project workflow. When assigned, each claiming scheme step typically inherits the quantity and unit of measure from the associated component, providing a consistent basis for tracking installed quantities across all stages of work.
Additional Information
9977 N 90th Street, Suite 250 Scottsdale, AZ 85258 | 1-800-637-7496
© 2026 InEight, Inc. All Rights Reserved | Privacy Statement | Terms of Service | Cookie Policy | Do not sell/share my information
