Cost/Schedule Trade-Off Tool
To assist the decision maker in identifying opportunities for trade-off between cost and schedule, the research team developed an Excel® based tool. This user-friendly tool evaluates the degree of tradeoff and assists in identifying techniques to optimize cost and schedule.
The CSTT is designed to accomplish the following:
- Analysis of project drivers to rank importance of the drivers in the trade-off decision.
- Quantify the trade-off between cost and schedule based on the drivers and set a scale to measure it.
- Using this scale and the input from the impact assessment surveys, techniques are ranked by their relative effectiveness to achieve the trade-off.
- Based on analysis, lists of applicable techniques are provided for each project phase individually as well as for the whole project.
IR214-2, Cost/Schedule Trade-Off Tool (CSTT)
CSTT is an Excel-based tool to evaluate the degree of trade-offs and to assist in identifying techniques to optimize cost and schedule.
Operation of the CSTT
The CSTT analyzes the importance of project drivers and quantifies trade-offs between cost and schedule based on these drivers. It then ranks the techniques based on their effectiveness and lists the applicable techniques for each individual project phase, as well as the project as a whole. A flowchart of the operation of the CSTT is shown below.
Driver Analysis
On the first input screen, users are asked to weigh the top six project drivers on a scale of 1-10 with respect to their importance in the overall project. In the second section, the drivers are rated again with respect to the importance of cost or schedule reduction from the standpoint of each of the drivers. On the second input screen the user is asked to distribute project cost and schedule duration among the five phases:
- Pre-project planning
- Design
- Materials
- Construction
- Startup
CSTT Output
The initial output screen provides a graphical representation of the cost/schedule trade-off, identifying whether the project should be handled as “cost-driven” or “schedule-driven,” as well as a listing of the top techniques identified for the overall project and those for each project phase.
