Cost-loaded programs — tying the schedule to the margin
Why the program and the cost report shouldn't be two tools you reconcile by hand, what 'cost-loading' actually means, and how earned value turns a schedule delay into a margin signal.
tectm team
What this post will cover
- Two tools, reconciled by hand. Most teams run the program in one tool and the cost in another, then spend month-end stitching them together. Why that gap is where delays turn into surprises.
- What cost-loading actually means. Attaching each budget line to the schedule activity that will spend it, so cost is distributed across time as planned value — four curve shapes, one time-phased baseline of what should be spent by when.
- Earned value in plain English. Planned value vs earned value vs actual cost; the schedule and cost performance indices (SPI / CPI) that fall out of them.
- Forecast at complete off CPI. How the estimate at completion rides on earned-value performance — the floor, and where you can override it.
- How the site diary closes the loop. Progress recorded against activities is what makes earned value real, not assumed.
- Why a critical-path delay is a dollar number. When cost and time live on one spine, slippage on the critical path shows up as a margin signal the day it happens — not two months later when the costs catch up.
- What changes when cost and time live on one spine. One model carries both the money and the time, so the program stops being a picture and starts being a financial control.
Why this matters
A program that doesn't know what anything costs is a picture. A cost report that doesn't know the schedule is a lagging indicator. Put them on one spine and a delay becomes a number you can act on while there's still time to recover it.
Book a demo and we'll cost-load one of your programs live.