Making Earned Value Management Work for Your Business
Dr. William A. Kessler
Online Adjunct Instructor teaching at Universities in Cybersecurity Management, Project Management, Data Analytics, and Business Strategy. 10 years Project Management experience (IBM, GE VFS, Blue Cross, MBI, Readers)
Earned value means the “value earned.” We want the actual costs of a project not to exceed the budgeted costs.
A control account is used as a mini-contract to deliver something (scope) in an agreed amount of time (schedule), using only the resources that can be obtained within a quantified budget (cost).
If the control account is calculated wrong or a correct control account doesn't take into account future risks and variables then the project will fail.
My Suggestion: give the contractor early delivery bonuses with specified quality control metric deliverables. A successful example of this is in 2017 Georgia offered $3.1 million incentive to finish I-85 bridge early and the bridge was open on 5/15/2017.
Shepherd, B. (2010). Effective earned value management. Paper presented at PMI? Global Congress 2010—North America, Washington, DC. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.