The share of projects in global economy rises consistently. Yet, all too often, projects are substantially overdue, substantially overrun in costs, fail to deliver the promised value, or combinations of the three. Worldwide, capital projects have exceeded their approved forecasted budgets for centuries. Despite Immense efforts which have been invested throughout the years in trying to improve this reality, it is still rather disappointing. As some experts summarized: hundreds of years of pain with minimal gain. In this presentation, time/duration-cost relationships are re-examined, using data of real projects. An outcome of this examination is the understanding that different dependencies of costs on durations might exist, and at all levels: from individual activities and up to project level. Besides, many cases have been found where very few activities determined the outcome of much larger projects. These distinctions are explicitly considered in cost estimations during project planning and are included and integrated in project control. The application of the integrated control scheme and its advantages are demonstrated using data from real projects. 

Keywords

Cost-Duration, Relationships, Global economy