Airports Industry Pack

Airport Construction Cost & Schedule Forecasting

Airport works happen around a live operation. Productivity is set by how many hours you are allowed on site, not by how many people you can put there, and most forecasts miss that entirely.

How the engine works
Home › Forecasting › Airports

Typical project-controls challenges in airports

The method is the same everywhere. These are the sector conditions that make a generic approach wrong, and what each one means for how you control the project.

Night possessions destroy productivity

A six-hour night window yields far less than six hours of daytime work once mobilisation, escorting and demobilisation are deducted. Applying daytime rates overstates progress from day one.

Effective output can be under 50% of daytime

Operational constraints outrank the programme

A runway reopens on time regardless of whether the work finished. Overruns are absorbed into future windows, quietly extending the programme.

The constraint is fixed; your work is not

Airside access overhead is not in most estimates

Passes, escorting, vehicle permits and security screening consume hours that never appear on a labour histogram.

A standing overhead on every shift

Weather cancels windows entirely

A lost night possession is rarely made up. It waits for the next available slot, which may be weeks away.

One lost night can cost a fortnight

CAA and safeguarding approvals gate work

Crane permits, obstacle limitation surfaces and safeguarding sign-offs are prerequisites that behave like regulatory gates.

No approval, no work, no recovery

Which capabilities apply

Every tool below is a separate workbook that works on its own. These are the ones airports teams tend to reach for, and what each one answers.

Analyse

  • Whether the programme you were sent is built properly, before you rely on it
  • Where the critical path really runs, and how much float is protecting it
Schedule Quality Analyser

Control

  • Cost and schedule performance against the baseline, in CPI and SPI
  • Change and risk exposure on one register, not in email
The core suite

Forecast

  • Outturn cost and completion date as a range, not a single number
  • The contingency needed to be 80% confident, not 50%
Forecast Engine

Measure

  • Progress claimed against rules of credit rather than opinion
  • An update block you can paste straight back into P6
Progress Measurement System

Contract & claims

  • Whether a submitted programme meets NEC4 clause 31.2
  • Productivity loss measured against an unimpacted period
NEC4 Compliance Disruption & Productivity Loss

Sustainability

  • Capital carbon baseline and forecast against target
  • Evidence trail for PAS 2080 assurance
Carbon & PAS 2080

How it runs, month to month

  1. Export two tables from P6 or Microsoft Project. An activity list and a relationship list. Nothing in your scheduling tool changes.
  2. Paste them in. The shaded cells are the only inputs. Everything else is formula-driven.
  3. Check the programme is sound. The schedule quality scorecard runs the DCMA checks and tells you what to fix before you forecast from it.
  4. Enter the period progress and cost. Earned value, actual cost and planned value by period.
  5. Read the forecast and issue the report. CPI, SPI, EAC and the P50 to P80 range, with the assumptions recorded alongside them.

What's in the Airports edition

The engine is identical across industries. The edition supplies the content that makes it speak your sector's language, so it is useful the first time you open it rather than after a fortnight of setup.

WBS skeleton

  • Airside civils & pavements
  • Lighting & AGL
  • Terminal fit-out
  • Baggage systems
  • Stands & aprons
  • Landside access

Cost codes

  • Night shift premium
  • Escorting & security overhead
  • Possession mobilisation
  • Plant standing time
  • Temporary works & diversions

Risk register

  • Possession cancelled by ops
  • Weather loses a window
  • Safeguarding approval delay
  • Unrecorded buried services
  • Airline schedule change

Constraint milestones

  • Runway closure windows
  • Seasonal traffic restrictions
  • CAA safeguarding sign-off
  • Stand handback dates
  • Terminal opening date

Worked example

Taxiway reconstruction, 14 of 40 possessions used

BAC £23M. EV £7.4M, AC £8.9M, PV £8.1M. Two possessions lost to weather, and effective night productivity is running at 61% of the daytime rate assumed in the baseline.

CPI
0.83
EAC
£27.7M
Possessions needed
48
P80 completion
+11 weeks
The forecast that matters is not the money. It is that you now need 48 possessions and only have 40 booked. Eight more windows must be negotiated with operations, and that negotiation has a lead time of its own.

Illustrative figures, shown to demonstrate the method. Your numbers replace them.

Reports and outputs

Each of these is a sheet in the workbook. They recalculate when you enter the period progress, so there is nothing to assemble at month end.

Cost forecast

  • Three EAC methods side by side
  • CPI, SPI, cost and schedule variance
  • Variance at completion and TCPI

Monte Carlo

  • 1,000 iterations, no macros
  • P50, P80 and P90 outturn cost
  • Forecast duration and delay against baseline

Earned Schedule

  • Time-based schedule performance
  • Forecast completion date
  • Stays honest late in the job, unlike SPI

Cash flow and resources

  • Payment lag and retention modelled
  • Peak funding requirement
  • Resource forecast by period

Productivity

  • Trend against planned rate
  • Early warning before CPI moves

Assumptions and audit

  • Every distribution, its source and date
  • The record that defends the number

Airports questions

Yes. Night, day and weekend shifts each carry their own effective-output factor, which the forecast applies to remaining work.
That is the headline output. Remaining work divided by realistic output per window, so you can book slots before you run out.
Logged with a cause, feeding the cancellation rate used in the Monte Carlo rather than a fixed assumption.
The possession model suits any constrained-access environment. It works equally for landside and terminal work with the factors changed.

Other industry editions

NuclearMulti-decade, regulator-gated ConstructionNEC4 valuation cycles Data CentresCost per MW, long-leads AirportsNight possessions, live ops OffshoreVessel rates, weather windows RailPossessions, GRIP/PACE stages Power T&DOutages, connections, consents Energy GenerationEscalation, grid dependency

Forecast airports with numbers you can defend

Airports Edition £349, all eight editions £999, complete suite £1,399