What can you expect from a cost management consultant?

Whether you are improving your cost management practices or simply don’t have enough resources to support your cost management process, it might be time to get some outside experience in. A cost management consultant possesses knowledge about the industry’s best practices and examples of common mistakes and failures. You can expect a lot from a cost management consultant:

Experience

Use experience from the field to understand and help improve the work process and interfacing for elements of project and cost management, such as:

• Estimating and budgeting
• Earned value management
• Change management
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Quality control
• Schedule control

Skills

Have the skills to prepare and validate cost estimates throughout the project lifecycle with state-of-the-art tools and techniques. This means they can fill the gaps in your estimating process between project phases where you previously were not able to make estimates. Decrease project costs by validating vendor and contractor estimates and challenge their prices.

Cost data analysis

Study cost data to find cost estimate relationships and build cost models, estimating methods and templates to improve your estimating techniques. This is a comprehensive task that requires a large amount of structured and indexed data. A cost management consultant has experience with this to help you on your way.

Cost control

Can apply cost control and earned value techniques to monitor, assess and forecast project performance. Properly implementing earned value can prove to be difficult. You need knowledge about costs but also have experience with the work that needs to be carried out in the field. From progress reports and earned value a cost management consultant knows how to extract performance metrics and benchmark projects to provide advice to decision-makers.

Sharing knowledge

Have the skill to share knowledge and experience about cost management to a wide public, teaching about the industry’s best practices. A consultant certified by the AACE is familiar with internationally recognised methods and terminology, but in the end, you want to be able to perform cost management by yourself. This requires a consultant that not only implements the process, but also knows how to teach people and bring everyone on board.

Finding all these treats in one person can be challenging. Remember that cost management is a profession it itself, for which people need studying and training. By hiring a cost management consultant you know you have the right person for the job.

Anything to add to this article or do you have some questions please contact us.