Cost

In this week's episode, Ricardo addresses the risks of the Diderot Effect. For many, this effect is directly related to consumption bias. However, it is perfectly applied also when we add something to our project, and that something triggers a series of new features causing control to be completely lost. This effect impacts budget, deadlines, and team, among many other factors.

In this episode, Ricardo talks about the challenges faced in projects when there are resources whose costs are in foreign currencies. You will understand the role of hedging, to protect the project against exchange rate fluctuations.

In this episode, Ricardo explains what the differences between capital projects, also known as Capex (Capital expenditure) projects, and traditional projects, which are focused on a business operation, also known with Opex (Operational expenditure) projects.

In this episode, Ricardo talks about how neural networks and the analogous estimating can help when determining the project budget, especially when you have access to reliable historical information.

This paper aims to discuss the use of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to model aspects of the project budget where traditional algorithms and formulas are not available or not easy to apply. Neural networks use a process analogous to the human brain, where a training component takes place with existing data and subsequently, a trained neural network becomes an “expert” in the category of information it has been given to analyse. This “expert” can then be used to provide projections given new situations based on an adaptive learning.

On this last episode of the series on cost estimation, Ricardo talks about the proportionality factor, parametric modelling and neural networks.

In this episode, Ricardo continues to talk about cost estimates, explaining how to use the capacity factor to calculate costs when there is economy of scale.

In this episode, the first in a series of three podcasts on costing, Ricardo talks about the types of analysis that we can do during the project cost estimation.

In this second part of the podcast about Lines of Balance, Ricardo talks more about how this concept can be used in the project's planning and control phases. This time, Ricardo gives an example about the application of lines of balance in an election vote counting process. Do not forget to listen to the first part of this podcast.

In this podcast, Ricardo begins to explain what Line of Balance are and how can they be used. He gives an example of how to plan repetitive tasks in order to achieve optimal resources allocation and also know how the project's speed and progress evolve. Next week, he will bring an example related to elections.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the dangers of underestimate the complexity of the procurement management. He gives three tips on how we can increase the chance of success in our projects. They are: 1 - Seek knowledge about what will be purchased; … 2 - Analyze the total cost of acquisition, not just the price; … 3 - Associate payment events to deliveries on your project.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the difference between cost and price. Many people are confused and Ricardo explains what's behind each one, differentiating them.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the choice of producing a work or service internally or purchase thru a supplier. He shows five items that are important when making the decision and also explains that there are other important criteria for choosing to make or buy than the costs involved.

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the methods of forecasting project schedule and cost. He comments that there are four methods of predicting future project performance: time series methods, causal/econometrics methods, judgmental methods and other methods. Ricardo explains and gives examples of each method.