There is no universal ROI percentage for an EVMS. A credible estimate starts with what the company already does well, the avoidable losses it faces, and the cost of closing specific gaps.
Published research links EVMS maturity with better cost performance: a 2023 study of 35 projects totaling more than $21.8 billion found that high-maturity projects averaged 54% less cost overrun against their baselines than low-maturity ones.
Paul Bolinger’s full article explains where the financial return comes from, how to calculate a return the company can defend, and how to test the business case on a representative project before committing to a full implementation.
Is an Earned Value Management System (EVMS) worth the investment to implement? Any business weighing an EVMS implementation has to answer that question, and it rarely gets a straight answer. In a new article for the H&A EVMS Education Center, Paul Bolinger builds a business case for disciplined project management. He wrote it for a construction business that routinely delivers large, complex projects, but the same approach works for any business evaluating how to objectively measure the cost benefits from implementing an EVMS.
Paul is careful about what the evidence does and doesn’t show. Research on EVMS maturity, construction scheduling, and project management practice all points the same direction, and the article summarizes findings from GAO, NASA, PMI, the Construction Industry Institute, and others. None of the research establishes a return that can responsibly be promised to an individual contractor. The return depends on what the implementation actually changes. Where estimating, scheduling, and forecasting are already strong, the gain may be modest. Where significant gaps exist, the opportunity may be substantial.
The financial value comes from management action, not from a set of performance metrics. Because an EVMS compares actual cost with the budgeted value of the work accomplished, management can tell efficient performance from delayed work, recognize margin erosion earlier, and change the approach for the remaining work while there are still options. The article includes a matrix of current practices worth examining, the questions that define the business case, and simple formulas for ROI, benefit-to-cost ratio, and break-even, along with cautions against double counting benefits or crediting the EVMS for every favorable outcome.
Read the full article, including the ROI formulas and Paul’s recommended first step, on the EVMS Education Center.
The August 2026 NDIA IPMD forum emphasized using Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) as an early-warning system that helps management identify risks, make timely decisions, and protect project outcomes.
Forum discussions included integrating subcontractor schedules into the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), improving Schedule Risk Assessments (SRAs), maintaining credible Estimates at Completion (EACs) and forecast completion dates, and proactively managing Level of Effort (LOE).
The NDIA IPMD Clearinghouse Committee provides a forum for industry and government EVMS practitioners to discuss challenges and develop mutually acceptable solutions. H&A actively participates in these forums and provides related guidance through our blogs and articles.
H&A earned value consultants routinely attend and present at the NDIA Integrated Program Management Division (IPMD) forums that are held twice a year as well as serve on the IPMD Board of Directors. The IPMD forum presentations, discussions between industry and government customer representatives, and Clearinghouse Committee topics provide an opportunity to discuss current challenges and options for resolving them. If you are not familiar with the IPMD Clearinghouse Committee, a time slot on the agenda is reserved for this committee’s working session. Industry Earned Value Management System (EVMS) practitioners raise and discuss issues along with the government EVMS counterparts to develop mutually acceptable resolutions and/or recommendations. Issues raised during the Clearinghouse Committee sessions have often been the basis for launching many other IPMD committees such as the Planning and Scheduling Committee and Prime/Sub Committee.
In addition to EVMS related challenges that surface on recent H&A engagements, the H&A blogs and articles are often written to address common issues or general themes from these IPMD forums. The August 2026 forum was no different. What follows is a short list of discussion and presentation topics from the August 2026 forum with links to H&A blogs or articles that address these current issues and presentations.
The value of an EVMS. This was a general theme from three presenters that aligns with recent H&A EVMS Education Center articles including one titled “Ten Project Failure Risks: Using an EVMS to Improve Project Outcomes.” The purpose and value of an EVMS is often lost when the focus is on producing contractual reports or managing to a set of compliance metrics instead of using the data as an early alert system for emerging risks and issues. An EVMS provides management a disciplined way to understand the current status of a project and where it may be headed. Management must provide the response to the EVMS alert signals, make decisions, and take action while there is still time to protect project outcomes.
Approach for integrating subcontractor schedule data into a prime’s Integrated Master Schedule (IMS). There are often differing opinions from the contractor’s or the government customer’s point of view about how the IMS should be structured to include this data. The main goal is to determine a logical approach that does not overcomplicate the structure and content of the IMS that makes it difficult to maintain or compromises the overall purpose of an IMS. The H&A blog “Integrating Subcontractor Data into an Integrated Master Schedule” discusses this common challenge and risks when scheduling requirements are not clearly defined. It also discusses three approaches for incorporating subcontractor schedule data with pros and cons for each approach.
Schedule Risk Assessments (SRAs). The continuing discussions on SRAs often center around the quality of the SRA data and that it is being treated like a check the box exercise. The solution isn’t to require contractors to perform monthly SRAs. That fails to address the root cause: meaningless duration estimates. In some instances global factors are applied to existing duration estimates as a short-cut. Producing a useful SRA starts with a high-quality IMS along with a disciplined risk management process and focused analysis of selected tasks that have a high probability of impacting a major event or project completion date. The H&A blog “Maximizing the Value of Schedule Risk Assessments (SRAs)” provides suggestions on how to implement a straight-forward process that helps to produce a more realistic IMS.
Estimates at Completion (EACs). This is another continuing discussion between industry and their government customers about practices that help to ensure a contractor’s forecast completion date (FCD) and EAC are realistic. The H&A blog “Maintaining a Credible Estimate at Completion (EAC)” emphasizes the importance of realistic EACs and why it matters to all stakeholders. The blog discusses practices that can help to ensure EACs are actively maintained along with suggestions for practical process improvements including leveraging evolving tools and analytics.
Proactive management of Level of Effort (LOE). The LOE topic often comes up in the Clearinghouse working sessions. When the percentage of LOE work packages and their total budget value for a given project is low, some consider LOE to be a non-factor in the overall picture of project performance. However, that is not always the case. Selecting the LOE earned value method must be a conscious decision (not a planning short-cut) and actively managed to ensure the timing and duration as well as any relationship to discrete work packages remain valid. The H&A blog “Level of Effort (LOE) Best Practice Tips” discusses common LOE issues and provides suggestions on how to ensure LOE is properly planned and managed.
Interested in Learning More?
The NDIA IPMD Clearinghouse Committee is a useful resource for industry to discuss EVMS related issues and identify options to resolve them. H&A is a direct conduit to the Clearinghouse Committee co-leads that work with the government counterparts to document recommended solutions. If you need help resolving an issue with your EVMS, we can help. Call us today.
Most projects don’t fail from one big event. They fail because a set of common, well-documented risks are left to grow once a project is authorized and underway.
An EVMS can’t fix these risks by itself, but it surfaces the warning signs early enough for management to act, if the data is read honestly and the relationships between cost, schedule, and risk are examined together.
Paul Bolinger’s full article walks through all ten, from poor communication and scope creep to inexperienced management, with the EVMS perspective and warning signs for each.
A follow-up to “Why Projects Fail,” which looked at what goes wrong before a project is even authorized, this new EVMS Education Center article from Paul Bolinger picks up where that one left off. It looks at ten risks that show up once a project is defined, funded, and running, and how an EVMS can surface each one before it becomes a major variance.
The article is direct about what an EVMS can and can’t do. It provides the structure to define work, measure accomplishment, and forecast outcomes, and it gives management a disciplined way to see where a project has been and where it’s heading. It cannot correct unstable requirements, weak estimates, or poor decisions on its own. That’s still on management.
The ten risks, from communication breakdowns and scope creep to hidden dependencies and team turnover, rarely occur in isolation. Paul traces how they reinforce each other: poor communication conceals scope growth, scope growth invalidates the cost estimate, weak estimates produce unrealistic schedules, and the conditions accumulate until the project runs out of time, budget, and flexibility to recover. The full article closes with five management questions worth asking on every project, regardless of how the metrics look this month.
Read the full article, including all ten risks and the five management questions, on the EVMS Education Center.
Most project failure takes root before a project ever starts, in optimistic estimates that don’t hold up against real-world execution.
The planning fallacy, hidden complexity, and weak estimating methods are the biggest drivers, and an EVMS can surface the drift but can’t fix a baseline that was never realistic.
Paul Bolinger’s full article lays out the remedies: distributional thinking, documented assumptions, the outside view, independent review, and reduced complexity where possible.
A project can have a formal schedule, an approved budget, and a fully compliant Earned Value Management System (EVMS) and still finish late, over budget, or short of the value it promised. In a new article for the H&A EVMS Education Center, Paul Bolinger looks at why that happens so often, and why it usually has nothing to do with whether the project team knows how to plan.
The short answer is the planning fallacy: the well-documented human tendency to anchor estimates on a best-case version of the work, even when past experience says otherwise. Paul traces how that bias compounds with hidden complexity between tasks, point estimates that hide real uncertainty, and in the largest, most visible projects, outright strategic misrepresentation to get an effort approved in the first place.
He’s also direct about where EVMS fits and where it doesn’t. A properly implemented EVMS is one of the most effective tools available for surfacing cost and schedule variances once a project is underway. What it can’t do is retroactively fix an unrealistic baseline. That has to happen earlier, with better estimating discipline and a willingness to use historical data instead of hope.
Read the full article, including Paul’s five remedies and a look at the “iron law of megaprojects,” on the EVMS Education Center.
SRAs are only as valuable as the intent and quality behind them. Treating them as a check-the-box compliance requirement produces meaningless results that get filed away and never used.
Real-world examples show how cost pressure and last-minute guidance changes at kickoff can derail an SRA, leaving project teams with outputs no one trusts or acts on.
Focusing three-point estimates on tasks that drive critical and near-critical paths delivers real insight without the prohibitive cost of analyzing every task in a large IMS.
Documented assumptions for selected tasks produce derived duration factors that are far more accurate than gut-feel percentages, and the difference shows up directly in the SRA results.
A previous blog, Schedule Risk Assessment Fundamentals, highlighted that when properly used, schedule risk assessments (SRAs) are a powerful management tool that can contribute to project success. It does, however, require a high-quality integrated master schedule (IMS) that is integrated with a disciplined risk management process. When conducted with the intention to gain a realistic view of schedule outcomes and risk drivers, it provides management with additional insight and an early warning indicator of potential threats to meeting schedule objectives.
The Challenge with Conducting SRAs
Schedule risk assessments are frequently a topic of discussion in project management circles and sometimes for the wrong reason. A well-run SRA can provide the confidence levels for achieving different schedule end dates as well as valuable insight into the IMS. However, the SRA is particularly susceptible to the “garbage in – garbage out” (GIGO) principle.
H&A consultants have recently observed discussions that indicate SRAs are not being properly performed or used to help manage projects. Some of these observations reinforce the GIGO principle.
One H&A senior consultant sat in on a meeting with the government program manager for a large project where the consultant, having worked on the just-completed SRA, asked the government program manager what they would do with the results. The amazingly honest answer was, “Sadly, it will just be filed. It is seen as a check-the-box thing we have to do.”
Using the results of the SRA to stuff the drawer might not be as wild a response as it seems. Too many times, we see the SRA being done in a perfunctory manner using inputs that will not yield useful management information and insight. One way people are cutting corners on the SRA is by applying global factors to the existing duration estimates and running the simulation with those durations. Applying a formula across the board is not the same as analysis. Yes, the SRA can be done so poorly it is meaningless. This is especially true if the applied factors are not realistic.
An Example of What to Avoid
One of our consultants observed that in one case the best of intentions were thwarted in the SRA by cost pressures and lack of management commitment. The manager of the SRA provided a form to each CAM for them to provide the best case, worst case, and most likely case duration estimates and provide written explanations for all three cases. The instructions were for the CAMs to use the form for every incomplete task and future task.
There were about 10,000 such tasks distributed among 70 or so CAMs. On average, that would be 140+ tasks for each CAM. Doing three-point estimates for 140 tasks would be a large expense and consume a lot of valuable time, without even mentioning the cost.
The government program manager, who pays the bills, was present at the kickoff meeting for the SRA and intervened immediately when he heard the directions being provided. He stated that he would not pay for all that effort; it would be too costly. Unfortunately, there was no probing to find out what would be reasonable to this manager in terms of details for the SRA.
Instructions for this SRA were revised on-the-fly and the SRA was done. It was done poorly; in some parts due to the disruption at the kickoff meeting and the poor guidance. The intervention of the government program manager had left the impression that the SRA “was not worth it.” That impression was wrong.
The idea of documenting the three-point estimates is a good one, but too time-consuming to be applied to every task. There are valid options that can still benefit from this detailed look at the durations, yet avoid the significant expense of analyzing all the tasks.
A Better Approach
One approach is to do a detailed analysis of the three-point estimates for specific selected tasks that reduces the number of tasks that require detailed manual estimation. The focus should be on the tasks that provide insight into the part of the IMS most likely to cause the end date or a major event date to change. Examples include those tasks that are:
On one or more of the top number of critical paths.
On the path to the next major event (these tasks can be found using the driving path approach).
Known to be or assumed to be prone to duration risk.
Known to require scarce resources that may have limited availability.
Believed to be drivers of duration risk for other reasons.
A simple example will help to understand why documenting the three-point estimates for some tasks is basic to achieving a useful SRA. If you, acting as a CAM, were asked to estimate the time required to drive 10 miles from your home to work by car in a hypothetical town, you would want to understand the scope of the effort. A drive of 10 miles through the countryside, or on a freeway, or on city streets can be very different.
Some help with the assumptions could improve your estimate. If you were told that the first 5 miles of the drive was in town, where the speed limit is 25 mph with the potential for red lights along the way, and the last 5 miles is on the freeway, where the speed limit is 60 mph, this would help you produce a better estimate.
In fact, you will get a better estimate by understanding the scope, the assumptions, the risks, and so on. When doing the three-point estimate, you would employ a process that includes these steps that consider:
The nature of the task. What exactly is to be done in the task?
Past experience. Have we done this or similar work before?
Capabilities. For example, can you drive, does your car work well, can you go up to 60 mph in your car, do you have gas, and are you equipped for potential weather?
Assumptions. How many traffic lights are there along the way? How long would you wait at a red light? What time of year is it? What day of the week? What time of day?
The risks. Are there possible road issues, such as construction? How about traffic issues? Accidents?
Now, suppose you were required to document your estimated durations. Using the assumption details from above, you might end up with this:
Case
Duration
Assumptions
Best
17 minutes
A dry day, early in the morning before traffic, you have all green lights, and you obey the speed limit.
Most Likely
23 minutes
The road is fine, first 5 miles is at 25 mph. Only 2 red lights with a wait time of 2 minutes each, and 7 minutes for freeway travel at 45 mph.
Worst Case
32 minutes
The road is slippery and you can only travel at 20 mph. You must stop at 3 red lights and sit for 2 minutes each. You have one unexpected stop for 4 minutes because of other drivers. Also, the freeway speed is only 45 mph.
You now have a set of durations you can use in the SRA. You also have the details needed for explaining the duration estimate. Additionally, there is enough information to be able to change the estimates if presented with new facts or revised assumptions. For example, perhaps the project’s period of performance moves to the right and the work will now be performed in the winter. You can adjust your estimates for winter weather impacts.
You also have enough information to be able to derive factors to be used in formulae to generate three-point estimates for other tasks. Be careful to make sure you only use the information to generate a factor on similar work. In this case, the factors would be -26% and +39%. Those are derived factors. For comparison, a common “gut feel” reaction to the question of what factors should be used is usually more like minus 5% and plus 10%. Using derived factors versus a “gut feel” will yield significant differences in the SRA and the value of the results.
Recommendations to Increase the Value of an SRA
Begin with the intention to treat the SRA as the important and valuable tool it is. Choose to change the approach from a “check-the-box” or compliance mentality into a straightforward process that helps to produce a more realistic and executable IMS. No one likes schedule or resulting cost surprises as discussed in another blog, Maintaining a Credible Estimate at Completion (EAC), that also addresses why a credible forecast completion date is equally important. Here are a few suggestions to improve your approach to conducting SRAs:
Provide clear, specific directions to project personnel on what is expected. Highlight why the SRA is an important step.
Verify a quality IMS has been established.
Validate the risk information.
Do focused analysis of discrete tasks on a given number of critical and near-critical paths and document the rationale for the best/worst/most-likely case durations.
Do focused analysis on driving path tasks if not on the critical paths.
Do focused analysis on known risks.
Use realistic factors derived from reality when applying factors to the larger body of IMS tasks.
Taking Action
Producing a quality IMS takes skilled master schedulers that understand the management and predictive value of a well-constructed schedule. The next step up to improve the realism of the IMS is to conduct an SRA when it makes sense. Examples include conducting an SRA as part of the process to establish the baseline schedule, when there is major change, or before a major event such as a Critical Design Review (CDR).
It is not an easy task to distill the steps to conduct a value-added SRA into a well-defined and useful process. H&A master schedulers and risk subject matter experts often work with clients to establish a pragmatic SRA process. They also train and mentor project teams on how to use the SRA outputs to produce realistic schedules with a higher probability of success. Call us today to get started.
A common Earned Value Management System (EVMS) compliance and surveillance review finding are issues with a contractor’s estimate at completion (EAC) process. A credible EAC is essential to successfully manage all contracts and projects.
EACs are important because they provide a projection of the cost at contract or project completion, which is also an estimate of total funds required by the customer. It matters because EACs represent real money. When the most likely EAC exceeds the negotiated contract cost, the contractor’s profit margins may be at risk. It also creates a problem for the customer when the most likely EAC exceeds their funding limits.
We recently updated our blog titled Maintaining a Credible Estimate at Completion (EAC) to highlight why this is a good time to review and potentially update your estimate to complete (ETC) and EAC processes. The updated blog added content specific to:
Incorporating integrated master schedule (IMS) analysis to test the realism of the EAC to identify any disconnects with the cost-based independent EACs (IEACs). It is equally important to determine a realistic forecast completion date (FCD).
Ensuring control account managers (CAMs) are in a position to substantiate their schedule timeline, resource requirements, and cost estimate to complete the remaining work. It is equally important that project managers proactively take the action of “scrubbing” the CAM’s detail ETC/EAC and verifying the data to gain a better understanding of the project’s current state. This improves the quality of the project-level forecast completion date as well as the range of project-level EACs.
Suggested actions to review and enhance current processes from basic steps, such as incorporating an analysis of the IMS Current Execution Index (CEI) to gain an understanding of how well project personnel can forecast into the future, and taking advantage of AI tools to provide additional data analysis insight.
In addition, the publication of the EIA-748-E Standard for EVMS revised 27 guidelines and related updates to government agency guidance such as the DoD EVMS Interpretation Guide (EVMSIG) will require contractors to review and remap EVM System Description content to the revised set of guidelines. The updated blog emphasizes this is a good time to revisit internal ETC/EAC processes and procedures to determine where improvements can be made as well as to ensure project personnel are following the documented processes. The EIA-748-E split the EIA-748-D Guideline 27 into two guidelines. The EIA-748-E Guideline 20 is specific to the control account level EACs and Guideline 23 is specific to the project level EACs. An EVM System Description should have content specific to the process at the control account level as well as the project level that can easily be mapped to the EIA-748-E Guidelines 20 and 23.
Do Your Internal Processes and Procedures Need a Refresh?
H&A earned value consultants routinely assist contractors with updating their internal processes and procedures to reflect the evolving EVMS requirements and guides, regulatory environment, and toolset capabilities. Workflow steps can often be simplified and the quality of performance analysis can be improved with a refreshed approach that reduces the time needed to produce reliable and actionable information. Call us today at (714) 685-1730 to get started.
