Project Scheduling & Cost Planning Skills

What Will You Gain?ALTAWAIL Consulting & Training is a PMI Authorized Training Partner (ATP). Participants will develop practical skills in preparing realistic project schedules and cost plans, measuring project performance, and forecasting completion dates and final costs using appropriate professional tools. Participants who complete the course may claim 18 Professional Development Units (PDUs).

• Develop a structured project schedule based on the project scope and work breakdown structure.
• Define and sequence project activities using appropriate dependencies and network-diagramming techniques.
• Estimate activity durations and resource requirements using suitable estimating methods.
• Apply critical path analysis to calculate early and late dates, identify critical activities, and determine available float.
• Develop and maintain an approved project schedule baseline.
• Prepare project cost estimates and aggregate them into a time-phased project budget and cost baseline.
• Integrate schedule, resource, and cost information to produce a realistic and internally consistent project plan.
• Apply earned value management measures to evaluate schedule and cost performance.
• Calculate and interpret schedule variance, cost variance, schedule performance index, and cost performance index.
• Forecast project completion dates and final costs and recommend appropriate corrective or preventive actions.

• Practical case studies and scenario-based discussions.
• Group activities, workshops, simulations, and collaboration exercises.
• Practical exercises.
• Instructor-led explanations, facilitated discussions, and structured problem-solving.

Target Audience: This course is designed for project managers and planners, as well as scheduling, cost, and project controls professionals, PMO and project team members, and anyone responsible for developing, reviewing, or monitoring project schedules and cost plans.

• Project schedule development
• Activity sequencing and network analysis
• Duration and resource estimation
• Critical path and float analysis
• Schedule baseline management
• Project cost estimating and budgeting
• Time-phased cost baseline development
• Integrated schedule, resource, and cost planning
• Earned value performance measurement
• Variance analysis, forecasting, and corrective-action planning

Remarks: This course is delivered by ALTAWAIL Consulting & Training, a PMI Authorized Training Partner (ATP). Participants who complete the program may claim 18 Professional Development Units (PDUs) toward maintaining their PMI certifications through the Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) Program.

• Ways of Working: 14 PDUs
• Power Skills: 0 PDUs
• Business Acumen: 4 PDUs
• Total: 18 PDUs

• Linking project scope, WBS, and schedule development
• Planning levels, milestones, assumptions, and constraints
• Schedule-development process and responsibilities
• Schedule quality and internal consistency

• Defining activities from work packages
• Establishing logical dependencies
• Precedence relationships and network diagrams
• Identifying leads, lags, and external dependencies

• Analogous, parametric, and three-point duration estimation
• PERT-based duration calculations
• Resource requirements, availability, and productivity assumptions
• Effects of risk, productivity, and complexity on estimates

• Forward and backward pass calculations
• Early and late activity dates
• Critical path identification
• Total float, free float, and schedule flexibility

• Building and validating realistic project schedules
• Resource loading and analysis
• Schedule compression using crashing and fast tracking
• Establishing, updating, and controlling the schedule baseline

• Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) and detailed cost estimates
• Analogous, parametric, and bottom-up cost estimating
• Aggregating estimates into a time-phased budget and cost baseline to support compliance with project financial constraints
• Contingency and management reserves, budget control, and financial decision support

• Aligning schedule logic with resource and cost assumptions
• Resolving resource constraints and planning conflicts
• Checking consistency across project-planning data
• Producing an integrated project plan that reflects project priorities and schedule and financial constraints

• Planned value, earned value, and actual cost
• Schedule and cost variances and performance indices
• Forecasting completion dates and final costs and evaluating their implications for project decisions
• Selecting corrective and preventive actions through project scenarios