Get your PDF guide and explore all course details.
The Project Scheduling & Cost Planning Skills Course gives project managers, planners, and cost engineers a comprehensive, practically grounded capability in project scheduling and cost planning — covering estimation fundamentals, budget development, critical path and critical chain analysis, risk management, earned value performance measurement, schedule and cost variance analysis, and recovery planning.
Schedule and cost control are the disciplines that most directly determine whether projects are delivered within their approved parameters. Yet many project professionals lack the structured analytical capability to build realistic estimates, manage resource constraints, incorporate risk into plans, measure performance accurately, and recover projects that have deviated from baseline. This course addresses every one of those gaps.
Delegates progress from scope definition, triple constraint management, and Critical Path scheduling through budget development, resource planning, schedule acceleration, PERT analysis, critical chain and buffer management, earned value measurement, variance forecasting, and structured recovery planning — building a complete, integrated scheduling and cost planning capability across all five days.
The Project Scheduling & Cost Planning Skills Course is built for project professionals who want the analytical tools and practical disciplines to produce more realistic plans, manage performance with greater rigour, and recover projects that have drifted from schedule or budget before they reach crisis point.
The Project Scheduling & Cost Planning Skills Course is designed to develop comprehensive project scheduling and cost planning capability across estimation, budget development, risk management, performance measurement, and recovery analysis.
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
The Project Scheduling & Cost Planning Skills Course is designed for project managers, planners, cost engineers, and project controls professionals who are responsible for developing, managing, and recovering project schedules and cost plans across any sector or project type.
This course is suitable for:
The Project Scheduling & Cost Planning Skills Course is delivered through a structured, analytically focused learning approach that moves from estimation fundamentals and Critical Path scheduling through budget development, risk management, critical chain analysis, performance measurement, and recovery planning. Each day builds directly on the previous, ensuring delegates develop a complete, integrated scheduling and cost planning capability across the full course.
Practical application exercises including schedule development, PERT calculations, variance analysis, and recovery planning are integrated throughout, ensuring delegates develop direct, hands-on analytical capability alongside conceptual understanding.
Delivery methods include:
AZTech is an official PMI Authorized Training Partner (ATP). All applicable project management courses are pre-approved by the Project Management Institute, allowing participants to earn the necessary PDUs and Contact Hours for certification and recertification.
Register now or contact our team to discuss schedules, delivery formats, and customised options.
Check out other training courses might interest you
Common questions about our training courses
Day 1 covers project estimating and scheduling fundamentals, examining cost and schedule estimation approaches, cost budgeting and control principles, project selection methods, and Critical Path Method scheduling. Delegates develop the foundational scheduling and estimating literacy that underpins every subsequent topic in the course, including resource planning, risk integration, critical chain analysis, and recovery planning.
Performance measurement is addressed within Day 4, examining how planned progress is measured against schedule, how actual progress and work conditions are tracked and managed, and how variable conditions in project execution are managed without compromising schedule and cost baseline integrity. Delegates develop the measurement discipline to monitor project performance continuously and accurately rather than discovering significant deviations only when they have become difficult to recover.
Recovery planning is the culminating focus of Day 5, covering recovery analysis, recovery plan development, and the establishment of recovery baselines and controls that provide a new performance framework for projects that have deviated from original baseline. Delegates develop the structured recovery planning capability that distinguishes project professionals who can turn around troubled projects from those who simply report deteriorating performance without an actionable path back to delivery.
Day 3 focuses on risk management within a scheduling and cost context, covering risk identification, analysis, and management, contingency reserve calculation, PERT analysis with probability and standard deviation formulae, network activity risk profiles, and project risk strategies. Delegates develop the ability to build risk and uncertainty directly into schedule and cost plans — producing estimates that reflect realistic delivery ranges rather than optimistic single-point assumptions that consistently underestimate project duration and cost.
Day 5 covers variance analysis and forecasting in full, examining schedule and cost variance calculation, progress control chart trend analysis, and variance forecasting methods that project realistic schedule and cost outcomes at completion. Delegates develop the analytical capability to identify variance trends early, before they harden into unrecoverable deviations, and to communicate forecast outcomes clearly and credibly to project sponsors and stakeholders.
Delegates will return with a complete project scheduling and cost planning capability, able to develop realistic Critical Path and Critical Chain schedules, integrate resource constraints and risk into plans, measure performance accurately using earned value principles, analyse schedule and cost variances, forecast outcomes at completion, and develop structured recovery plans when projects deviate from baseline. For any organisation where project schedule performance, cost control, and on-time delivery are operational priorities, this course delivers the analytical tools and practical disciplines to raise project scheduling and cost management standards measurably and sustainably.
