工商管理市场营销外文文献翻译

Project Budget Monitor and Control

Author：Yin Guo-li

Nationality：American

Derivation：Management Science and Engineering. Montreal: Mar 20, 2010 .

With the marketing competitiveness growing, it is more and more critical in budget control of each project. This paper discusses that in the construction phase, how can a project manager be successful in budget control. There are many methods discussed in this paper, it reveals that to be successful, the project manager must concern all this methods.

1. INTRODUCTION

The survey shows that most projects encounter cost over-runs (Williams Ackermann, Eden, 2002,pl92). According to Wright (1997)'s research, a good rule of thumb is to add a minimum of 50% to the first estimate of the budget (Gardiner and Stewart, 1998, p251). It indicates that project is very complex and full of challenge. Many unexpected issues will lead the project cost over-runs. Therefore, many technologies and methods are developed for successful monitoring and control to lead the project to success. In this article, we will discuss in the construction phase, how can a project manager to be successful budget control.

2. THE CONCEPT AND THE PURPOSE OF PROJECT CONTROL AND MONITOR

Erel and Raz (2000) state that the project control cycle consists of measuring the status of the project, comparing to the plan, analysis of the deviations, and implementing any appropriate corrective actions. When a project reach the construction phase, monitor and control is critical to deliver the project success. Project monitoring exists to establish the need to take corrective action, whilst there is still time to take action. Through monitoring the activities, the project team can analyze the deviations and decide what to do and actually do it. The purpose of monitor and control is to support the implementation of corrective actions, ensure projects stay on target or get project back on target once it has gone off target。

3. SETTING UP AN EFFICIENT CONTROL SYSTEM

For the purpose of achieving cost target, the manager need to set up an efficient management framework including: reporting structure, assessing progress, and communication system. The employees' responsibility and authority need to be defined in the reporting structure. The formal and informal assessing progress can help getting a general perspective between reality and target. It is significant to help identify what is the risk and should be monitored and controlled. Project success is strongly linked to communication. The efficient communication system benefit for teamwork and facilitate problem solving ( Diallo and Thuillier, 2005 ).

4. COST MONITOR AND CONTROL

4.1 Ranking the priority of monitoring

In construction phase, many activities are carried out based on the original plan. It is need to know what kind of activities or things are most likely to lead the project delay and disruption. Therefore, the first step is ranking the priority of the activities. Because the duration of a project is determined by the total time of activities on critical path, any delay in an activity on the critical path will cause a delay in the completion date for the project (Ackermann Eden, Howick and Williams,2000,p295). Therefore, the activities on critical path should firstly to be monitored and controlled. Secondly, monitoring the activities with no free float remaining, a delay in any activity with no free float will delay some subsequent activity inevitably. These subsequent delays will discomfit the resource schedule significantly. Some resources are unavailable because they are committed elsewhere. Thirdly, monitoring the activities with less than a specified float, because if an activity has very little float, it might use up the time before control decision is made once such an activities has a variance with the target. Fourthly, managers should monitor high risky activities. High risky activities are most likely to overspend. Fifthly, managers should monitor the activities using critical resource. Some resource is critical because they are very expensive or limited (Cotterell and Hughes, 1995).

4.2Methods of cost control

The main cost of a project includes staff cost, material cost and delay cost. To control these cost, managers should first set up a cost control system to: a) Allocate responsibilities for administration and analysis of financial data

b) Ensure all costs are properly allocated against project codes

c) Ensure all costs are genuinely in pursuit of project activities

d) Check that other projects are not using the budget.

Then, managers should monitor and control change to the project budget. It means the following things:

a) Concerned with key factors that cause changes to the budget

b) Controlling actual cost changes as they occur

- Monitor cost performance to detect variances

- Record all appropriate changes accurately in the cost baseline

- Preventing incorrect, unauthorized changes being included in the cost baseline

- Determine positive and negative variances

- Integrated with all other control processes (scope, change, schedule, quality) As a project is dynamic, sometimes the project managers know the project is going out off target by monitoring, but don't know the best action to take. In this circumstance, net present value (NPV) should be used as an ongoing monitor and control mechanism, because NPV takes account of the time element and discounts future cash flows, it is the result of the time effect on cash

4.3 Change monitor and control

Voropajev (1998) states that dynamic changes of project environment will influence the process of project implementation, the project itself and may cause heightened risk. When carried out some activities, the methods different from that in the original plan must be used to keep the process moving forward (as experienced under practice). Therefore, changes are inevitable and need to be managed during project life-cycle (Voropajev. 1998,p 16- 17) .An effective change control system should be established to ensure change procedure is clear and unambiguous and easy for employee to request a change. And the following things need to be concerned:

a) Monitoring and forecasting most probable changes Key factors that generate change to ensure good results; make sure that change must be checked by suitable person.

b) Changes should take place once it is approved and be monitored to check whether it worked as expected

c) All changes in project should be recorded in the project documentation (Voropajev, 1998,pl8).

5. CONCLUSION

This article shows the best methods of budget control. First, an efficient control system must be set up. Secondly, It is required to recognize and rank the important factors affecting budget target. Thirdly, manager should combine different control techniques to reach the success of a project.

项目成本减少与控制

作者：Yin Guo-li

国籍：美国

出处：管理科学与工程．2010.03.20

随着市场竞争的激烈性越来越大，在每一个项目中，进行成本控制越发重要。本文论述了在施工阶段，项目经理如何成功地控制项目预算成本。本文讨论了很多方法。它表明，要取得成功，项目经理必须关注这些成功的方法。

1.简介

调查显示，大多数项目会碰到超出预算的问题(Williams Ackermann, Eden, 2002,pl92)。据Wright（1997）的研究，一个好的经验法则就是相比首次成本预算至少会增加50%(Gardiner and Stewart, 1998, p251)。这表明，项目是非常复杂并且充满挑战的。很多意想不到的因素会导致项目成本的增加。因此，许多科学技术和方法被应用于监测和控制成本来促使项目的成功。在这篇文章中，我们将讨论在施工阶段，项目经理如何才能成功控制预算成本。

2.项目控制和监测的概念和目的

Erel and Raz (2000)指出项目控制周期包括测量成本是实际情况，将施工成本的实际值和计划值进行比较，对比较结果进行分析，并采取适当的措施来纠正偏差。项目在施工阶段的监测和控制对于项目的成功是至关重要的。为了采取正确的纠偏措施需要建立项目监测机制，同时这样做也可以有时间来采取措施。通过监测手段，项目团队可以分析偏差产生的原因以及决定纠偏措施并采取行动。监控的目的就是纠偏措施的实施，确保项目控制在计划目标内或者使已经偏离计划的回到目标范围内。

3.建立一个有效的控制体系

为了实现预算成本的目标，项目管理者需要建立一个高效的管理框架，包括：报告的结构，评估的进展情况以及沟通体系。在报告结构中，雇员的责任和权力应该要清楚地被定义。正式的和非正式的评估可以帮助实际和目标之间大体上保持一致，且这对于确定什么是风险以及哪些需要被监测和控制是非常有帮助的。项目成功与良好的沟通密切相关，一个高效率的沟通体系有利于团队协作并促进问题的解决( Diallo and Thuillier, 2005)。

4.成本费用的检测和控制

4.1对检测的优先顺序进行排序

在施工阶段，很多施工活动是基于原来的计划。它需要清楚什么样的活动或者哪些东西是最有可能导致项目延误和不受控制的。因此，第一步就是要对这些

活动进行优先排序。由于项目的工期是由关键路径上的关键工作的总时间决定的，任何关键路径上工作的延迟将导致项目工期的拖延(Ackermann Eden, Howick and Williams,2000,p295)。因此，关键路径上的工作应该首先进行检测和控制。其次，检测没有自由时差浮动的工作，任何没有自由时差工作的延误将导致其后续工作的拖延，这些后续工作的延误将对资源分配安排带来影响，有些资源被分配到特定的工作是不可以变更利用的。第三，检测具有较少浮动时间的工作，因为，如果一个工作具有非常少的浮动时间，那么当它偏离目标的时候很有可能在还没有采取控制措施前就将浮动时间用完了。第四，项目管理者应该检测高风险活动，高风险活动最有可能超支。第五，管理者应该检测项目活动中使用的关键资源，有些资源由于是非常昂贵和有限的而至关重要(Cotterell and Hughes, 1995)。

4.2成本控制的方法

一个项目的主要费用包括员工成本、材料成本以及工期延误的成本。为了控制这些成本费用，项目管理者首先应该建立一个成本控制系统：

a)为财务数据的管理和分析工作落实责任人员

b)确保按照项目的结构来合理分配所有的成本

c)确保所有成本都是项目进展过程中各项活动的真实支出

d)检查其它工程项目没有使用此项目预算

然后，项目管理者应该对项目预算进行监督和控制变更。这意味着以下几点：

a)关注可以引起成本变化的主要因素

b)控制实际成本的变化

--监测成本发生情况来发现它的变化

--在成本控制线上准确地记录所有恰当的成本变动

--为防止出现错误，没有经过允许的成本变化也应该体现在成本控制线上

--确定积极地和消极的成本变化

--与其它控制目标（范围、变更、进度、质量）相结合

由于一个工程项目是动态变化的，有时项目经理通过监测知道项目成本正在偏离预算，但是却不知道采取什么措施来控制。在这种情况下，净现值（NPV）能够被用来作为一种持续监控的方法，因为净现值考虑了时间的因素来对未来现金流折现，它是现金流考虑时间价值影响后的结果。

4.3变化的检测和控制

Voropajev (1998)指出，施工环境的动态变化将会影响项目的实施过程、项目本身以及增加项目风险的可能性。当在开展施工活动的时候，不同于原计划的各种方法必须被应用来保持项目向前推进（根据实践经验）。因此，变化是不可

避免的，需要在项目的整个生命周期过程中管理和控制变化(Voropajev. 1998,p 16- 17)。为了确保变更程序是明确和毫不含糊的以及方便施工人员提出要求发生改变，应该建立一个有效的变更控制体系。可以从以下几个方面考虑：

a) 为确保良好的结果，应检测和预测最有可能发生变更的主要因素，应该保证变更必须由合适的人员检查

b）一旦被批准，变更应该发生并对此进行监测以检查是否按预期工作

c)项目的所有变更应该被记录在项目文件资料中(Voropajev, 1998,pl8)

5.结论

本文介绍了控制预算的最佳方法。首先，必须建立一个高效率的监管控制体系；其次，它必须包括影响成本预算目标的主要因素并将它按照重要性排序；第三，项目管理者应该结合不同的科学控制方法以达到项目的成功。