Tools › Project Management › Cost
Cost
2 tools in the Project Management area.
Cost Estimating
Three estimating methods of the NASA Cost Estimating Handbook and the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide: learning curves by unit (Crawford) and cumulative-average (Wright) theory, from an entered slope or fitted by log-log regression to unit or lot cost data, with the cost of unit N, cumulative totals and averages, lot costs by the exact sum and the algebraic lot midpoint, and a log-log chart; a parametric cost estimating relationship fitted to driver, cost pairs as a power law and as a straight line, with the standard error, coefficient of variation, slope t test and a prediction interval at a new driver value; and a life-cycle cost of a year table of acquisition, operating and disposal costs in constant-year and then-year dollars, net present value, savings-to-investment ratio, equivalent annual cost and the simple and discounted payback. The default case is a 90 % Crawford curve with a first-unit cost of 1,000 over 100 units in three lots, the storage-tank CER of NASA CEH Appendix C Table C-5 (17.31 at 2.2 tons) and the 10-year program of NASA CEH Appendix N Table N-7 (NPV +36.01 at 7 %).
4 worked examples reproduced, listed on the tool page.
Cost Risk Analysis
Cost risk and uncertainty analysis of a work breakdown structure pasted as text: each element's low, most likely and high cost (or mean and standard deviation) with a triangular, PERT, uniform, normal or lognormal distribution, the closed-form mean, standard deviation and mode of every element, the analytic roll-up (sum of means, root-sum-square and correlated standard deviation, normal-approximation percentiles) and a seeded Monte Carlo simulation with Iman–Conover rank correlation or a Gaussian copula within correlation groups or from a pasted matrix. Optional risk-register events (probability × impact) and a schedule-driven cost (days of delay × burn rate) are added. Outputs: the cost S-curve, the percentile table, the contingency at each chosen confidence level against the point estimate and the sum of most-likely values, the cumulative probability of the point estimate, the P80 − P50 management-reserve figure, GAO's allocation of the contingency by standard deviation and by need, the risk-driver ranking by variance share and rank correlation, a tornado of the items by their swing and the register's expected monetary value. The default case is the NASA Cost Estimating Handbook example (Appendix G, Tables G-4 and G-5): eleven lognormal elements with a correlation of 0.6, mean $236 million and one standard deviation of $27 million, as the handbook prints.
1 worked example reproduced, listed on the tool page.