Tracking Materials Costs with Earned Value

[Dallas Pilcher]

I have attempted to track materials costs by creating a
task for each materials purchase and playing with the
baseline, actual and fixed costs but this does not effect
BCWP, BCWS, or ACWP.

I also setup a materials resource and assigned it to a
regular task. The materials cost still didn't seem to
effect earned value.

How are project materials expenditures best tracked?

 

[John V]

With resources, measurement is in time and uses BCWP,
BCWS, and ACWP. Material resource measurement uses
quantity. Therefore you assign the quantity of material
that the task will take (either fixed or variable). Don't
forget that you have to indicate the unit of measure (i.e.
feet, tons, skids, etc).

Hope this helps.

John

 

[Steve House]

The cost of materials is not the cost of the task to acquire them but rather
the costs of the units of material that are used up in the tasks that
consume them. If I use $1000 worth of film for my movie, the cost is not a
fixed cost associated with the task of purchasing the film, it is the cost
of 5000 feet of film at $0.20 per foot used up filming the car chase,
entered as a resource assignment of Film, 5000 units, in the task of
shooting the scene on the same dialog as the assignments of the people
involved.

Steve House
MS Project MVP