Evaluating Earned Value Management for Managing Time and Cost Overruns in Infrastructure Construction Projects

Abstract Infrastructure construction projects are always faced with time and cost overruns because of their size, uncertainty and multi-stakeholder status. Earned Value Management (EVM) has received a lot of publicity as a unified project control method that is able to concomitantly track cost and schedule performance. This review paper is a critical analysis of the EVM in time and cost overruns management in infrastructure construction projects. The research synthesizes empirical evidence of EVM applications in the transportation, energy, and public infrastructure development projects based on a planned survey of peer-reviewed articles. The review evaluates the efficiency in using EVM to manage costs and schedule, outlines the major issues of implementation, and reviews the recent methodological extensions to overcome the weaknesses of conventional EVM. The results suggest that though EVM gives good early warning measures and enhances predictability of costs, its success in schedule management is limited unless supported by other sophisticated methods like Earned Schedule, risk-adjust models and computerized integration. The paper concludes that EVM can be best applied to the complexities unique to construction as a control mechanism that should be tailored to suit construction complexities instead of being implemented as a control mechanism.