A Heuristic Approach to Forecasting the Delivery Time of Major Project Deliverables

Abstract

Having a simple and practical approach to forecast project milestones is extremely valuable to managers, especially in megaprojects in which the stakes are high. This paper, based on past records of similarly completed projects, suggests a heuristic method to forecast these completion times in a practical way. The findings of this study are of interest to practitioners, especially to project, portfolio, and high-ranking senior managers who seek a pragmatic forecasting of their ongoing projects. In this exploratory research, available forecasting methods used to predict the duration of a project based on the types of data sources were first reviewed. Next, a Heuristic Estimation Method (HEM) was suggested, in which data from similarly completed megaprojects are used to predict the completion time of an ongoing megaproject. This method was then tested on a selected number of ongoing offshore oil and gas megaprojects to forecast their delivery dates. At the end and upon completion, the predicted dates were compared with the actual completion dates of the selected megaprojects. Results show that the suggested approach was able to forecast the delivery dates within an acceptable margin of error.