"Baseline Budget Cost" VS "Budget Cost"

[KingKikapu]

Can anybody explain to me what the difference is between "baseline
budget cost" and "budget cost" in Project 2007?

I'm aware of Budget Resources and how to use them (assigning them to
Project Summary Task etc), but what does baseline budget do that is
different from Baseline? One of my biggest difficulties in our
construction planning is baselining a placeholder resource on a task
until we can secure an actual contractor to do the work. Once we get
somebody to do the work, often all I wanted to change with regards to
the baseline is who did it and maybe how much they did it for. I want
to find a way to keep the original baseline dates, but update the person
and the money. Can baseline budget help me in this problem?

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Excellent question.

The trick is figuring out that the baseline does not always equal the
budget. Here are a couple of scenarios:

1) At the beginning of the project, I use the Budget Cost to plan for
contingency, and typically will try to baseline my project at 6-10% below the
actual budget cost.

2) You're in mid-project and trending under budget. You have a major change
order, but no matter how intricate you get with the baselining techniques,
you can't get the baseline to match up to the new target cost. Baseline at
where you are, but also save a new budget cost. This will allow you to spot
trends on tasks, and to analyze how much contingency is remaining.

So the baseline budget cost field just takes a snapshot of the budget at the
beginning of the project - or when you decide to take a major change order.
In the case of a recent project, as IT or the business uncovered funding
sources, the budget would be modified - but not the project activities.

This allowed us to track the shortfall or surplus of the project - while
still keeping a historical record of the original budget.

As to your particular issue, I am not sure that using budget resources would
help. I might question why you baseline activities before you assign
resources. The following approach might work a bit better:

1) Create a budget resource for each contractor you expect to hire. Assign
your estimated cost to the budget resource - which is assigned to the overall
cost of the project.
2) Create your contractors. Add them to the project, and assess if their
cost is in line with the budget resources already assigned.
3) Baseline your project after assigning the contractors.

A more nuanced approach might involve saving multiple versions of the
baselines: pre-construction, construction, and then comparing the two of
them. That way you can have your dates track to the original
pre-construction baseline, and your costs track against the construction
baseline. The same mechanism would work with interim plans as well.

Just throwing a couple of ideas out. Let me know if any of that might work
for you.

-A