Project Assurance - Case Study:

The Client Need: Develop and implement the contractor's first system for EVM compliance

A popular view holds that large federal government contracts are black holes of waste and inefficiency into which huge sums of money are poured with little accountability. Anyone who has ever managed a large federal contract knows better - and recognizes that the level of accountability increases with the size of the contract. Once a contract reaches a $25 million per year threshold, government rules call for an Earned Value Management (EVM) process to track scope, schedule and cost, allowing the government to determine how much value has been earned through the work at a particular time.

This technology project involved a contractor whose roughly 3,000 employees had extensive experience with federal projects. However, it was their first project that required earned value. They knew they needed to implement EVM across the organization, but weren't sure how to do it. The approach was also new to the federal agency.

Highpoint Global was providing project and program management assistance to the contractor, and they turned to us to leverage what we were already doing to meet the EVM requirements. The project involved multiple subcontractors and resources located throughout the U.S., as well as many agency staff contacts.

Because none of the parties had worked with an EVM system, we brought them together and developed a solution that met the need for compliance and provided useful information to both contractor and government client. Based on their input, we customized reports to make them as user-friendly as possible, presenting information in layman's terms. We kept everyone actively engaged throughout development and implementation, and delivered training to both sides so they would understand how the system functioned and would have complete confidence in the credibility of the information.

We developed schedules and created the performance measurement baseline (PMB). Throughout, we managed the CAMs (cost account managers), and we facilitated and conducted in integrated baseline review (IBR) between the government client and the contractor. We provide reports (and validate those reports) on a monthly basis.

Highpoint Global's solution has met with strong user satisfaction on both the contractor and client sides. Even more important, the system passed an external audit to verify compliance with federal standards for EVM.