PV — Planned Value
What you should have done
£200
The budgeted value of the work your schedule promised by today. Two sides were due, at £100 each. This is your yardstick for "on track".
Total budget · BAC
£400
The True Troop Consulting · EVM Masterclass
Earned Value Management sounds like accountancy wizardry. It isn't. It's three honest numbers — and every other metric is just those three wearing a different hat. We'll learn all fifteen questions by building one brick wall around a square plot: four sides, £100 each, £400 in total. It's the end of Day 2, one side is up… and the story the numbers tell is not a happy one. Yet.
You've been asked to build a brick wall around a square plot. Four sides. Each side costs £100 in labour and materials, so the whole job is budgeted at £400. That £400 is your Budget at Completion (BAC) — the finish line.
The plan is simple: one side per day. So by the end of Day 2, the plan says two sides should be standing — that's £200 of value earned.
Reality had other ideas. Day 1 hit rock in the trench, timber prices for the shuttering jumped, and a storm forced some rework. By the end of Day 2, only one side is finished — and that single side has already swallowed £300 of cash.
Now we ask fifteen questions. Every answer comes from three numbers you already have: what you should have done, what you have done, and what you've spent.
Learn these three and you've learned 80% of EVM. Everything after this section is just arithmetic performed on PV, EV and AC.
PV = what you SHOULD have done · EV = what you HAVE done · AC = what you have SPENT. Every other EVM metric is a dialect of these three.
Grouped into six families. Each answer is defined in plain English, then worked through on our brick wall. Watch how the same three numbers keep doing all the work.
Planned Value (PV). The budget value of the work your programme said should be complete by today. It's the benchmark — what "on schedule" would look like in pounds.
Earned Value (EV). The budgeted worth of what's genuinely finished. You earn a side's £100 the moment it's built — the actual cost is a separate question entirely.
Actual Cost (AC). The true money out of the door to date — labour, materials, plant, and the cost of putting mistakes right.
Budget at Completion (BAC). The whole job's authorised budget when 100% complete. The finish-line figure every forecast is compared against.
Schedule Variance (SV) answers in pounds; a minus means behind. SPI (Schedule Performance Index) answers as a speed ratio, where 1.00 means exactly on pace.
Cost Variance (CV) answers in pounds; a minus means over. CPI (Cost Performance Index) answers as value-for-money, where 1.00 means every £1 buys £1 of work.
Estimate at Completion — trend (EAC). Assumes your current cost efficiency (CPI) carries on to the end. The realistic, uncomfortable forecast.
Estimate at Completion — best case (EAC). Assumes the overspend was a one-off and every remaining side runs exactly on budget.
Estimate to Complete (ETC). The extra cash required from today onward to reach the finish — the forecast minus what's already spent.
Variance at Completion (VAC). The gap between the original budget and the forecast final cost. A minus is an overrun.
To-Complete Performance Index (TCPI). The value-for-money you'd need on every remaining pound of work to finish exactly on the original £400.
Interpret TCPI against ~1.10. Below the threshold, catching up is usually achievable. Well above it, a recovery is wishful thinking.
Plot (SPI, CPI) on the target. Top-right green is winning (ahead and under budget); bottom-left red is trouble (behind and over budget). One dot tells the whole story at a glance.
Root-cause analysis. The qualitative "why" behind the numbers — the story the maths can't tell you. Fix causes, not symptoms.
Pair one COST action with one SCHEDULE action. Balanced moves bend the trend; panic in one direction rarely does.
SPI, CPI and TCPI are all ratios that orbit the number 1.00. Once you can read one, you can read them all.
Good news. Ahead of schedule (SPI) or under budget (CPI) — every £1 is buying more than £1 of work.
Exactly on plan. You are doing precisely what the budget and programme promised — no more, no less.
Warning. Behind schedule (SPI) or over budget (CPI). Our wall sits at 0.50 and 0.33 — deep in the danger band.
The further a number sits from 1.00, the bigger the effect. TCPI is the mirror image: there, a number above ~1.10 is the warning, because it's the effort you'd need to recover — and 3.00 is a mountain.
The one-paragraph verdict
By end of Day 2 the wall is running at half speed (SPI 0.50) and returning just 33p of work per pound spent (CPI 0.33). Left alone, the £400 job finishes somewhere between £600 (best case) and £1,212 (current trend). Recovery to the original budget would demand triple efficiency (TCPI 3.00), which isn't realistic. The dot is in the red corner. That is not a reason to panic — it's a reason to act, precisely.
Do this now
Then tell the truth
Re-baseline honestly with the client using these figures, rather than promising a recovery the numbers say is impossible. Present the EAC range and the two-lever plan — that's a conversation built on evidence, not hope.
Three numbers in. Fifteen answers out. That's Earned Value Management.
Same wall, same plan — only reality changes. Work all fifteen questions for each scenario using the figures given, then reveal the solution to mark yourself. Scenario 1 is the one we just built together (use it to confirm your method); Scenarios 2–4 are fresh ground. The worked solutions are locked — your instructor will share the password when it’s time to mark.
Material costs spiked. Only Side 1 is complete, and it swallowed £300 — three times its £100 budget. Sides 2, 3 and 4 haven't started. Your line manager wants to know, before tomorrow, whether this job is in trouble and what it will take to fix.
Answer Q1–Q15 using these figures. Remember: EV is priced at budget (£100/side), never at actual cost.
🔒 Locked — enter the class password in the bar above to reveal this solution.
After the Day-2 setback the team brought in an extra crew on Day 3 to recover the delay. It worked — Sides 2 and 3 were finished the same day, so 3 of 4 sides are up and the programme is back on track. But total spend now stands at £450. Side 4 remains. The sponsor asks: was the acceleration worth it?
Answer Q1–Q15 using these figures. Watch what happens to CPI when you buy back time with money.
🔒 Locked — enter the class password in the bar above to reveal this solution.
Side 4 finished slightly early on Day 4 with modest labour savings. All four sides are complete and total spend is £375. The commissioning walk-down is tomorrow morning. You need to finalise the performance report for the owner's file.
Answer Q1–Q15. Note how the indices behave once a project is 100% complete.
🔒 Locked — enter the class password in the bar above to reveal this solution.
A material shortage stalled work mid-week. By the end of Day 3 only Sides 1 and 2 are complete (2 of 4), with spend at £300. Sides 3 and 4 can't start until materials arrive. The programme said all four sides would be finished in four days — you now have one day left and only half the job done.
Answer Q1–Q15. Both indices land in the same place here — but for different reasons than Scenario 1.
🔒 Locked — enter the class password in the bar above to reveal this solution.
Cross-check any answer in the workbook's Self-Check Calculator tab — type the four inputs and every metric computes for you.
* EAC (trend) = BAC ÷ CPI. Scenario 1 keeps the cheat-card figure (CPI rounded to 0.33 → ≈ £1,212; the exact value is £1,200). Scenarios 2–4 use exact CPI. The calculator rounds CPI to two decimals, so it may differ by a pound or two — that's rounding, not error.
Two files to practise offline. The workbook holds the four scenarios and a live self-check calculator; the cheat sheet puts the whole framework on a single page.