Question

A Case Study for Tasks 1 and 2

Manage Your Health, Inc. (MYH) is listed in the Fortune 500 Company that provides a variety of healthcare service across the globe. They have 20,000 full-time and 9,000 part-time employees. A study found that MYH, Inc. pays 45% more than the industry average for their employee healthcare premiums, due to the poor health of its employees. Therefore, the company has planned to provide a web application that provides online functionalities to help their employees enrol and manage their health-management and recreational programs. This application will have the following capabilities.

• Allow employees to register for company-sponsored recreational programs such as soccer, netball, bowling, jogging and walking etc.
• Allow employees to register for company-sponsored classes and programs to help them manage their weight, reduce stress, and stop smoking etc.
• Track employees’ involvement in these recreational and health-management programs
• Over incentives for people to join the programs and do well in them

Project’s financial information

The project is expected to cost the company $1150,000 for the web application development and $750,000 for web and database servers. The project is expected to take 6 months to complete. They believe that this application will help improve their employees’ health after a year of its rollout so that the company can negotiate lower healthy insurance premiums, providing a net saving of at $500 per employee per year for full-time employees and $250 per employee per year for part-time employees over next five years. The company does not expect any savings in employee healthcare premiums for the first two years when the application will be up and running. A yearly budget of $350,000 has been set aside for the next five years for system maintenance. A new role “Application Support Engineer” has been created with the responsibility to work with the software engineering team to develop the application and to provide on-going application support after the roll out of the application. This role will cost the company $100,000 with a 6% yearly increase in the annual salary. Assume that the discount rate is 7%.

Task 2: Project cost control You are required to control the budget for the above MYH’s project.

2.1 What is the total budget at completion (BAC) for the project?

2.2 Assume that the work for the first month is completed in the project. The following information has been provided as a result of work done so far.

Plan Value (PV) = $220, 000

Earned Value (EV) = $150, 000

Actual Cost (AC) = $200, 000

Answer the following questions 2.2.1 - 2.2.5 (must show all the working).

2.2.1 Explain a likely reason for the difference between PV and AC for the first month of this project.

2.2.2 Calculate the cost variance (CV) and the cost performance index (CPI) for the first month in this project? Is the project under or over budget?

2.2.3 Calculate the schedule variance (SV) and the schedule performance index (SPI) for the first month in this project? Is the project ahead of or behind schedule?

2.2.4 Calculate the new estimate at completion (EAC) for this project after the completion of first month’s work.

2.2.5 Calcuate how long it will now take to finish this project after working on the project for a month.

Answer 1

The MYH company has 20,000 full-time employees and 9,000 part-time employees. The benefit from reduction in insurance premium is $ 500 for full-time employees and $250 part-time employees.

2.1- Total budget at completion= 1150000 + 750000 = $ 1900,000

2.2.1-

The project has consumed less budget than that was planned for the first month. This has resulted in the AC value being lower than the PV value. It was planned to complete work worth $220,000 in the first month, however, the actual cost for the first month is $ 200,000.

2.2.2

Cost variance = Earned Value (EV) - Actual Cost (AC)

= 150000 - 200000 = - $ 50,000

The project is over-budget since the cost variance(CV) value is negative,.

cost performance index = Earned Value (EV) / Actual Cost (AC) = 150000 / 200000 = 0.75

The project is over-budget since the CPI value is less than 1.

2.2.3

schedule variance = EV - PV = 150000 - 220000 = - $ 70,000

The project is behind schedule since the SV value is negative.

schedule performance index = EV / PV = 150000 / 220000 = 0.682

The project is behind schedule since the SPI value is less than 1,.

2.2.4

estimate at completion = BAC / CPI = 1900000 / 0.75 = $ 2533333.33

Therefore, an overall budget of $2533333.33 shall be required to complete the project, based on the project's performance in the first month.

2.2.5

Time required to finish the project = Planned project duration / SPI = 6 months / 0.682 = 8.80 months

Hence, a total time of 8.80 months shall be required to finish the project.