Developing a new method to determine the actual project progress percentage for construction projects

Determining project progress percentage is one of the decisive factors in the project management, which takes place in two phases namely planning and controlling. The project progress percentage is a crucial factor for employers and contractors, especially in projects where it is a basis for payments. Determining actual project progress has been merely associated with the consideration of either cost or time owing to their simplicity and comprehensiveness in practical applications. However, there are several influential factors in determining the actual project progress percentage, which ignoring them results in inaccurate progress percentage. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the actual project progress percentage by considering five critical criteria affecting it such as; activity costs, human and non-human resources, activity criticality, and activity procurement status. Then, using Microsoft Excel, a number between one and five assigned to each criterion of each activity, after that a normalization method applied to recalculate the domain, ultimately the project progress calculated. More influential factors in calculating, led to more accurate and closer to reality information for project owners, experts, and managers. Finally, the efficiency and reliability of the proposed method implemented in a real project by comparing its result with a common method and showed about ۱۰% decrease.

Keywords:

Project progress , Progress percentage , Actual project progress