Project Planning, Scheduling & Cost Control
Overview
A realistic schedule and a controlled budget are the backbone of every project. This course develops practical planning skills: building logic-driven schedules, analysing the critical path, loading resources, estimating costs, setting baselines and using earned value to forecast and control performance.
Who should attend
Project planners and schedulers, project managers, cost engineers, project control staff and PMO analysts.
Training methodology
Interactive presentations, practical exercises, case studies, group discussions, role-plays where relevant, and a personal action plan that participants apply in their own work.
Objectives
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Build a logic-linked schedule from a work breakdown structure
- Calculate and analyse the critical path and float
- Level resources and compress schedules
- Estimate costs and set a time-phased budget
- Use earned value to measure and forecast performance
Course outline
Day 1Planning Foundations
- Planning versus scheduling
- Planning levels and the planning cycle
- From WBS to activity list
- Estimating durations
- Dependency types and lags
- Workshop: build an activity list
Day 2Critical Path Analysis
- Network diagrams
- Forward and backward pass
- Total and free float
- Near-critical paths
- Constraints and calendars
- Exercise: critical path calculation
Day 3Resources and Schedule Optimisation
- Resource loading and histograms
- Resource levelling and smoothing
- Crashing and fast-tracking
- Schedule risk and contingency
- Schedule quality checks
- Case study: recovering a late project
Day 4Cost Estimating and Budgeting
- Estimating methods and accuracy
- Direct, indirect and contingency costs
- Cost breakdown structure
- Time-phased budget and S-curve
- Cash flow planning
- Exercise: build the cost baseline
Day 5Monitoring and Control
- Progress measurement methods
- Earned value: PV, EV and AC
- Cost and schedule variances and indices
- Forecasting estimate at completion
- Change control and re-baselining
- Control reports and action plan
