Whose cost to complete should you believe?
Both numbers are assertions. Earned value turns the progress and spend figures already in the monthly report into an independent forecast, so you can show which of the two is closer to what the job's own performance predicts, and by exactly how much. No simulation, no license, just arithmetic a tribunal already recognizes.
Legal Intermediate Project Health Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
Is the Cost to Complete Claim Credible?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
One click rolls the rows up, and the two halves of the contractor's position come apart: the schedule reading supports it, the cost reading does not.
- Schedule (SPI)
- 1.04 genuinely ahead of plan
- Cost efficiency (CPI)
- 0.78 78 cents of work per $1 spent
- Independent cost to complete
- $4.14M performance-adjusted ETC
- Required efficiency (TCPI)
- 1.31 to finish inside the owner's budget
The job is ahead of schedule and badly over on cost, so the contractor is right about the programme and the owner is wrong about the money. Finishing inside the remaining $2,460,000 would take a 68% jump in productivity over everything achieved so far, so that figure is not a credible benchmark. But the claim still sits about $461,000 above the performance-based forecast of $4.14M, and that gap is the number genuinely in dispute rather than the whole $2.14M.
The model
Six workstreams from a stalled build contract, taken straight off the monthly report: what each was budgeted, how much should be done by now, how much is done, and what has been spent.
| Budget at completion (BAC) | $6,000,000 across 6 workstreams |
| Planned value to date (PV) | $2,660,000 |
| Earned value to date (EV) | $2,766,000 |
| Actual cost to date (AC) | $3,540,000 |
| Contractor's cost to complete claim | $4,600,000 |
| Owner's remaining budget | $2,460,000 |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Did that delay actually push the finish date?
- Will your reserve cover a bad claims year?How Big Could the Claims Year Be?
- Who is actually carrying the month?Which Lawyer Takes Which Matter?
- Why is your average claim the wrong number?What Do Claims Actually Cost?
- Is intake growing, or does it just feel busy?How Many Matters Are Coming?
- The venue moves the odds. By how much?Does the Court Change the Settlement Rate?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Schedule risk analysis.