Understanding earned value analysis

Track project health with earned value metrics — compare planned progress to actual progress and catch budget or schedule problems before they compound.

Earned value analysis (EVA) answers three simple questions about every project: Are we ahead or behind schedule? Are we over or under budget? At this rate, where will we end up? Gradeworks calculates these metrics automatically from your bid estimates, schedule, and actual cost data.

Key metrics

Planned Value (PV) — how much work should have been completed by now, based on the schedule and budget
Earned Value (EV) — how much work has actually been completed, measured in budget terms
Actual Cost (AC) — how much you've actually spent on the work completed so far
Cost Difference (CV = EV − AC) — positive means under budget, negative means over budget
Schedule Difference (SV = EV − PV) — positive means ahead of schedule, negative means behind

Where to find EV data

Open a project and navigate to the Cost tab. The EV summary shows PV, EV, AC, CV, and SV as of today. A chart plots these values over time so you can see trends — a project that's slightly over budget today but trending in the right direction is different from one that's accelerating past budget.

How Gradeworks calculates EV

Planned Value comes from the bid: the total budget distributed across work blocks proportional to their scheduled duration. Earned Value comes from block completion: when a block is marked complete, its budgeted value is earned. Actual Cost comes from time entries (labor) and material delivery records. The system updates EV metrics daily.

Pro tip

Don't wait until a project is 80% done to check earned value. Review the Cost tab weekly starting from the second week. Early differences are small and correctable. Late differences are large and expensive.

Interpreting the numbers

A Cost Difference of −$5,000 on a $500,000 project is noise. The same difference on a $50,000 project is a red flag. Always consider the difference as a percentage of total budget, not just absolute dollars. The project Cost tab shows both. Schedule difference works the same way — a two-day delay on a six-month project is normal; on a two-week project it's critical.

Important

Earned value is only as accurate as the data feeding it. If blocks aren't marked complete on time, EV lags behind reality. If time entries are missing, AC understates costs. The system can only calculate from what it knows — keep your data current.

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Reports and analytics

Use Gradeworks reports to track bid win rates, project profitability, crew utilization, and other key metrics that drive better decisions.

Tracking materials on projects

Track material orders, deliveries, and usage across your projects — compare actual consumption to estimates and catch cost overruns before they compound.

The project timeline

Visualize and manage your entire project schedule on the timeline — create blocks, set dependencies, assign crews, and watch the schedule respond to changes in real time.

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