A New Cost Management System for Construction Projects to increase Competitiveness and Traceability in a Project Environment

This research proposed a new method for project cost management based on Competitiveness and traceability in a case study and operational situation. The research hypothesis is based on the synergistic ability of performance focused activity based costing in combination of the target costing method for encouraging competitiveness cost control system for project environments. The method was developed to control, direct and overhead costs of the project during its progress. Also, it uses the feature of activity-driven and different resource drivers to determine the types of costs with the effect of time driver for each activity. An interview was conducted with financial managers during two to four times with the aim of validating and modifying the method. According to a semi-structured interview, the proposed method contributed to increase the precision, certainty, traceability of costs and provided the integrity of the accounting, technical and operational system. It also analyzes deviations and reduces costs by considering competitive and strategic conditions. Its also limiting the target cost of work packages and causing an alarm on the completion of each. According to Friedman test, there is a meaningful competitive ability compared to the conventional cost control method in the projects and it is also implemented in a case study. (C) 2021 ASEPUC. Published by EDITUM - Universidad de Murcia.