Assessing the performance of construction projects: Implementing earned value management at the General Services Administration

Abstract

There are many potential measures of performance for evaluating the success of a construction project. All address performance in three key areas: scope, schedule and budget. In a performance measurement framework where senior management wishes to minimise the numberof performance measures it employs, while ensuring maximal coverage or visibility into the programme, having a tool that captures each of the three areas would be ideal. Project managers have used Earned Value Management (EVM) for over 40 years to track actual schedule progress and actual costs against project plans. Earned Value Management has traditionally been applied to individual projects on which the manager is accountable for both schedule and cost variances. This paper proposes methods to apply EVM principles to allow: (1) analysis of portfolios of construction projects; (2) incorporation of the analysis into an innovative pay‐for‐performance human resources practice; and (3) use of regression analysis to develop baseline earned value curves. These extensions fit the needs of many government managers, who oversee a range of projects by multiple contractors, and whose cost risk is primarily due to schedule slips and change orders. Earned Value Management is described in the context of project oversight, and a dashboard system of performance measures is proposed for quickly assessing individual projects and portfolios. A method of generating standardised planned value curves is then specified, based on data from previous and ongoing projects. The paper concludes by showing how the US General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service is using these methods to analyse and oversee its portfolio of new construction and major repair and alteration projects.