Quantitative Effects of Project Change
This publication summarizes research conducted by the CII Change Management Research Team on the quantitative impacts of change. The research concludes that a significant correlation exists between the proportional amount of change on a project and labor productivity, both in design engineering and construction. The decline in overall productivity due to an environment of excessive change can alter the cost/benefit evaluation of potential changes and should be taken into account in project decision making. The research team recommends that project management track the expected amount of change over time as a tool in assisting decisions concerning timing and/or organization of change implementation.
The analysis of the projects submitted for study also shows that projects have a declining ability to recover lost schedule and costs in their later stages. This effect is expressed in a probability profile. A normalized contingency draw-down curve for the projects submitted suggests that many changes occur late in the project life cycle. Analysis of the data indicates that the timing of construction start does have an effect on the amount of change in engineering and in the total cost of changes, but the effect on construction change is negligible.
The research team also studied the amount of change experienced on projects of different types with varying contracting strategies. It is recommended that organizations analyze and retain project data, and also provide information on trends that general management can use as benchmarks to monitor project performance.
