Chapter 30 — Further Reading

Sources below are described by function rather than cited with invented precision. Standards, recommended practices, regulations, and contract documents are revised on their own schedules, and section numbers, thresholds, and titles change between editions — go to the publishing body for the current version rather than relying on a number quoted in a textbook, including this one. Nothing here should be treated as legal or contractual advice; your project's contract and your jurisdiction govern.

1. The Project Management Institute (PMI) — its practice standard on earned value management. The general-industry reference for the vocabulary and the arithmetic: PV, EV, AC, the variances, the indices, the estimate-at-completion family, and the to-complete performance index. It is not construction-specific and it is better on process discipline than on how a building actually goes together, so read it for the definitions and read this chapter for the failure modes. PMI also publishes broader project-management and scheduling standards that use the same terminology. For: anyone who will be asked to produce or defend an earned-value report, and anyone pursuing a PMI credential.

2. AACE International — its recommended practices on progress and performance measurement, forecasting, and cost estimate classification. AACE is the cost-engineering body, and its recommended practices are the closest thing the discipline has to a written craft standard: how progress is measured on different kinds of work, how earned value is claimed honestly, how a forecast is built and how much confidence it deserves at a given stage of definition. AACE also publishes the widely used recommended practice on forensic schedule analysis (RP 29R-03) — describe it, do not quote section text from memory — which matters here because it governs the schedule half of the question earned value cannot answer. For: project controls staff, estimators, and anyone who has to say how sure they are.

3. ANSI/EIA-748 — the industry earned value management system guideline. The set of guidelines an earned value management system must satisfy — organization, planning and budgeting, accounting, analysis and management reports, and revisions to the baseline. Federal agencies commonly reference it on major acquisitions. Read it for the systems view rather than the formulas: it is the document that explains why baseline maintenance, authorization of work, and control-account structure matter as much as the arithmetic. For: readers on federal work, and anyone building an EVM process at a contractor rather than a spreadsheet on one job.

4. Federal acquisition regulations and agency guidance on earned value reporting. The Federal Acquisition Regulation and its agency supplements set out when an EVM system is required, what reporting formats apply, and what the government is entitled to receive. For most federal construction contracts the requirement is narrower than a formally validated EVMS — typically a cost-loaded CPM schedule, monthly updates on a stated data date, and progress payments computed from the earned value of scheduled activities. Applicability thresholds and wording change. Read the solicitation, not your memory, and not this book. For: anyone bidding federal work.

5. The earned schedule literature. Earned schedule — converting the earned-value curve into time units so the index does not converge to 1.000 at completion — was developed and refined by practitioners in the project-controls community and is documented in conference papers, association journals, and a body of practitioner writing that is largely freely available. It is well established in the literature and in aerospace and defense, and it is not widely used in building construction. Learn it because it is genuinely better than SV and takes four minutes to compute; do not expect to find it in your next specification. For: readers who want the honest version of the schedule variance.

6. AIA contract documents — the G702 and G703 application and certificate for payment and continuation sheet, and the A201 general conditions. The schedule of values on the G703 is, on most projects, the document your earned value is actually computed from — which is why front-loading it corrupts your own reporting and not just the owner's cash flow. Read the general conditions provisions on schedule, progress payments, and the owner's audit rights, and read the ConsensusDocs and EJCDC equivalents alongside them to see how three well-drafted contract families handle the same risks differently. Describe the function; do not treat any one form as universal. For: every reader, before your first pay application.

7. CSI MasterFormat Division 01 — the construction progress documentation and payment procedures sections. This is where an earned-value requirement actually lives in a real project manual. Reading two or three genuine Division 01 sections from different owners — a state agency, a university, a health system — will teach you more about what the industry expects than any general treatment. Look specifically for who defines the data date, whether cost loading is required, which measurement methods are permitted, and what happens to the baseline when a change order is executed. For: anyone who has to comply with a specification rather than a textbook.

8. The Construction Industry Institute (CII). A university-industry research organization that publishes on project controls, progress measurement, benchmarking, and front-end planning, with an emphasis on capital projects. Its work is one of the few places you will find construction-specific empirical treatment of performance measurement rather than general project-management theory. For: readers who want evidence rather than convention.

9. The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA). Both publish practice guidance on project controls, cost reporting, and the owner–contractor relationship, and both run continuing education. CMAA's standards of practice are a useful statement of what an owner is entitled to expect from a construction manager, which is the frame you need when you are deciding what goes into a report an owner will read. For: readers moving toward CM at Risk or owner's-representative roles.

10. The Society of Construction Law Delay and Disruption Protocol. A widely referenced, freely available guidance document on delay, concurrency, float ownership, and acceleration. It belongs on this list precisely because it is not about earned value: it is the best short statement of what the schedule half of the question requires, and it will keep you from ever again offering an SPI as evidence of a completion date. For: anyone who will have to prove or defend a delay.

11. Oracle Primavera P6 and comparable scheduling software documentation — specifically the cost and resource loading features. Not a tutorial recommendation. Read how the tool assigns budgeted cost to activities, how it spreads that cost across an activity's duration, what happens to earned value when an activity progresses out of sequence, and how it computes percent complete by default. Two schedulers can open the same file and produce different earned-value curves because those settings differ. For: anyone who will be handed a file and asked what it means.

12. Your own company's closed jobs. The most useful earned-value reference you have access to is the monthly cost-performance history of projects your company has already finished. Pull the cumulative CPI curve for three completed jobs, plot it against percent complete, and find the month at which the number stopped moving. That single afternoon will tell you more about whether to believe an early CPI on your current job than any published finding — and unlike a published finding, it will be about your crews, your estimating, and your market. For: everyone, immediately.