The Cost Monitoring of Construction Projects through Earned Value Analysis

In construction industry, the term ‘procurement’ is considered as a project based job where clients and contractors are always keen to observe performance indicators. These indicators represent financial and non-financial efficiency of project activities. Among these, the monitoring of financial indicators such as cost monitoring is an ongoing process and its importance cannot be undermined during the project life cycle. It can be monitored by using traditional approach of direct reporting of actual cost against budget. However, the comparison of budget versus actual spending does not indicate the worth of the work which is completed at any given time. This approach does not represent the true cost performance of the project. Because of these limitations, this paper discusses the applications of Earned Value Analysis (EVA) for cost monitoring of construction projects in Malaysia. Besides traditional approach, EVA is a three-dimensional approach that compares three cost indicators i.e. the budgeted value of work scheduled with the earned value of physical work completed and the actual cost of work completed. Therefore, cost monitoring by EVA is an objective measure of actual work performed. This paper uses a case study, an example application of EVA as a cost monitoring tool. This case study reaffirms the benefits of using EVA for project cash flow analysis and forecasting.