Practical Issues of Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) for Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Construction

Cost, schedule, and quality are the three major performance indicators for any construction project. Under the globalized competition in the nuclear industry, researchers and practitioners have also explored a systemized and integrated management system for cost, schedule, and quality. In order to address this issue, the concept of earned value management system (EVMS) has been often utilized. However, implementing EVMS for a mega-project of nuclear power plant (NPP) construction requires extensive overhead efforts. Though previous studies proposed structures and methods for effective NPP EVMS, there has been no legitimate study for data collection strategy for practical implementation. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to develop an effective data collection strategy for NPP EVMS. Firstly, the barriers to practical NPP EVMS were identified based on literature review and expert interviews. Strategies for data collection were then developed based on different phases of project life cycle. This study focuses on the 'life-cycle integrated progress management system' for NPP construction from an owner's perspective Therefore, results of this study can be used as a guide for preparing request for proposals (RFP) of an NPP owner organization.