Project cost analysis

• Introduction
• Cost against time
• Accumulative actual cost
• Estimated and actual cost
• Accumulative estimated and actual cost
• Accumulated difference
• Analyse project costs

Introduction

There are a number of ways to analyse a project's cost on completion.  The easiest way to look at the overall changes is to plot the costs on a graph.  The builder can plot:

• a graph showing costs (ie a graph of actual cost)
• a graph comparing estimated and actual costs
• a graph showing the profit or loss at a given period.

The cost for the end of each month will be used in the following examples. The reason for looking at monthly costs is because builders usually pay their suppliers on a monthly basis.