What is a cost-loaded schedule?

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A cost-loaded schedule is a project programme where each activity has a budget and resource rate assigned, so that cost is earned as work progresses. It is the foundation of earned value management — linking schedule performance to financial performance in a single integrated model. A cost-loaded schedule combines two things that are often managed separately: the programme (the sequence, logic and timing of activities) and the budget (the cost allocated to each activity). When an activity is reported as complete or partially complete, the schedule automatically calculates how much budget has been "earned."

The practical steps to build a cost-loaded schedule are:

1. Build the programme — activities, durations, logic ties, milestones and a baseline in a scheduling tool like Primavera P6.
2. Assign resources and rates — labour, plant, material and subcontract costs are attached to activities, so each has a budgeted cost.
3. Set a baseline — freeze the planned cost profile (Planned Value curve) before work starts.
4. Update progress — as work is reported, the earned value curve is computed automatically.
5. Record actuals — actual costs from the ERP (SAP, Maconomy) are loaded against the same activities to enable CPI calculation.

The output is the S-curve: Planned Value, Earned Value and Actual Cost plotted over time — the standard chart for a project board update.

Why it matters — without a cost-loaded schedule, you can say a project is behind programme or over budget, but you cannot say both in the same sentence with a single number (CPI or SPI). That integration is what makes earned value meaningful and what makes EOT claims quantifiable.

Bildstak reads the cost-loaded schedule from Primavera P6 and joins it to the actual cost ledger, computing EVM metrics automatically and making them queryable alongside BIM and procurement data.

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