Analyze Earned Value and Forecasts
Use Case
The project team prepares the month-end report using a variety of tools to capture the most accurate picture of current project health. As the team collaborates to create an official Live Forecast, they apply additional data sources such as updated schedule values, time phased forecasting, and earned value metrics.
This section covers how to prepare the Live Forecast and reference time phased forecasts and earned value metrics.
Create Personal Forecasts and Publish to Live Forecast
InEight Control allows multiple users to create and save their own forecasts, which can then be shared with others as needed.
The Live Forecast is the official project forecast used for financial reporting. It is shared with all members of the project automatically.
Watch the following videos to learn about forecasting with InEight Control:
The following steps show an example of working with forecasts in Control:
Step 1
After the first day of work is completed on the Excavation scope of work, the field engineer updates his private forecast to review the data. Based on the actuals from day one, he notes that the unit cost is higher than the budgeted amount.
He completes his review of the private forecast and shares it with the project controller.
Step 2
The project controller receives shared forecasts from all field engineers. She reviews the values and determines what to apply to the Live Forecast.
As she reviews the Excavation actuals, she sees that the field engineer calculated the unit cost based on day one performance. She adjusts this to take the average performance to get a more accurate picture of the unit cost.
Step 3
After completing her review, the project controller pushes her updated forecast values to the Live Forecast. These values are now part of the official project forecast and can be accessed by all team members.
Access the following links for additional information on forecasting in InEight Control:
Create a Time Phased Forecast
If you are forecasting for a large scope of work, you can use time phased forecasting to analyze forecast details on a more granular level. Time phased forecasting uses the remaining cost and the duration to spread out values into a per period assumed cost. With time phased forecasting configured, you can generate cash flow curves and man-hour curves, visualize spending month by month, and coordinate time phased budgeting.
To set up your project for time phased forecasting, you’ll need to enable the correct settings and ensure that your Start and Finish dates are accurate.
The setting to enable time phased forecasting can be found in Control Settings under the Forecast tab.
If your Start and Finish dates need to be updated, you can either update them manually or perform an import. Access Set up and Lock the Budget to see details on updating schedule values.
Follow the steps below to see an example of creating a time phased forecast.
Step 1
The project controller wants to create a time phased forecast for a scope of work related to a change order. She makes sure these cost items have correct Start and Finish dates. She then chooses an appropriate cost curve for each cost item.
Step 2
She selects the cost items she wants to apply time phased forecasting to. From the Actions menu, she selects Time phased forecasting.
Step 3
The time phased forecasting register opens with the selected cost items.
The costs, man-hours, and quantities are distributed across the remaining periods based on the start and finish dates and the cost curve.
Step 4
The project controller knows that several crew members will be taking time off in the month of December, so she needs to decrease the values accordingly. She manually updates the values directly in the cells.
Step 5
She clicks Publish to push her updates to the Live forecast.
A window appears with a summary of her changes. She reviews the details, then clicks Yes.
Step 6
Back in Workspaces, the project controller can see the updated values for the cost item she modified.
Perform Earned Value Analysis
Earned value metrics are another useful source of project data that may be referenced while building the Live Forecast. Earned value is calculated as the planned value of a cost item multiplied by the percentage of work completed. Earned value metrics can be accessed directly in Control and may be used to inform discussions about losses, underperformance, top performers, and budget variances.
In Control, earned value is expressed through the following columns:
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CE cost earned
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CE MHrs earned
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CB cost earned
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CB MHrs earned
You can access these columns in the Current Estimate and Current Budget data blocks. Alternatively, you may choose to set up a custom data block with these columns and any other relevant data points to quickly reference earned value metrics. Following is an example of a custom data block designed for earned value:
Access the following links for additional information on Earned Value Analysis: