Monitoring project duration and cost in a construction project by applying statistical quality control charts

The earned value is a leading technique in monitoring and analyzing project performance and project progress. Although, it allows exact measurement of project progress, and can uncover any time and cost deviations from the plan, its capability in reporting accepted level of deviation is not well studied. This study presented an approach to overcome this limitation by applying statistical quality control charts to monitor earned value indices. For this purpose, project time and cost performance indices of a real construction project were monitored regularly on individual control charts. The results were quite promising, and not only competed well against traditional approaches, but also enhanced team's knowledge of project performance. At the end, it was concluded that the proposed approach improves substantially the project controlling scheme and enhances the capability of earned value technique.

► This study applied individual control charts to improve traditional earned value.
► The approach is very effective especially in the case of high priority projects.
► We focused on schedule and cost indices to ensure statistical control of project.
► We did not take previous assumptions, instead we proposed approaches accordingly.