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.