A leading service provider was experiencing project and budget overruns and could not identify the root cause. They needed a detailed review that compared the projected forecast to the actual project costs.
Fiber To The Home Actuals versus Forecast
The Problem
DTS Approach
- Aligned with the senior executives on the approach to analyze costs
- Collected data on targeted projects
- Forecasted material and labor costs
- Actual material and labor charged
- Created an Excel model to help facilitate analysis
- Created a data dictionary to cross reference material costs
- Created a data dictionary to cross reference labor costs
- Created common categorization between forecast and actual costs
- Identified and prioritized highest cost variances for each project
- Analyzed variances of each prioritized cost area
- Took corrective action to stop unnecessary expenses
- Reviewed findings with the client and provided recommendations

Client Benefits
- The client was able to identify expenses on spare materials that should not have been charged to the projects, leading to a development of a separate sparing program.
- The client found that on over 10% of the projects, funds were being used to provide temporary HFC services not covered in the funding request.
- Overall, the client was able to understand what was actually being charged to the projects and better manage and control their expenses closing a 43% program variance.