Methodology for Establishing BCWS from Conceptual Estimate

I start with a table of standard distributions of progress over varying durations from 3 to 24 months (based on historical data). I then take the primary accounts from the conceptual estimate, apply starts and stops relative to 100% of total construction duration, and then spread the hours for each Prime Account as per the distributions in the table. Sum up the prime accounts, plot the total distribution and there you have it - a quick and dirty BCWS. (This is all done in Excel.) Why would I do this? From the total distribution of hours I can extrapolate a rough staffing curve. We use this for early manpower shortfall analysis against available manpower in the construction location. This can be applied quickly, while setting up a full blown network schedule and resource loading is a significant effort and requires info usually not available at this point. I know that establishing preliminary BCWS can be done through quadratic equations-anyone doing it this? Im curious to know how others are establishing preliminary BCWS (especially when Its early and only conceptual estimates are available) and what kind of software you might be using to facilitate the process. Would love to hear from you.

One great source of information is the experience of the people that you have in addition to the learning lessons from previous projects. If you have done similar project in the past, you can take the actual manpower distribution and modify it to the exact new needs and you can get the new expected staffing plan. I would also recoemmend that you start reading on the BIM; Building Information Modeling and the IPD: Integrated Project Delivery. The building is done in 3D and the constructability is called 4D for obvious reasons because you are seeing the construction of the building with time. The cost is 5D.

From your initial statement it sounds more like you are going through this effort to establish a staffing profile to help learn of any potential shortfalls. Certainly you can call this a BCWS if you choose, but to me Its more like a funding profile. Still, it has the embryonic beginnings of an EVM Baseline, but my concern is that one might think is it an EVM BCWS is the formal sense when it is not. Of course how the BCWS is determined has a lot to do with applicability of ANSI 748 to your projects. Im looking forward to others replies about the methods used, regardless of what you call the estimate.

Process of establishing a Planned Value BCWS involves identifying the Costs associated with the work. This is applicable to a each project and all phases and stages on the project, be the project worth Multi Million Dollars or few hundred thousand dollars. The Works associated need be detailed at the level of detail possible and costs assigned. The parameters utilized on Conceptual Estimate be pricing done on  similar previous projects factored for location, inflation, scale. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------