Should you build or buy Project Cost Control & Earned Value Management?
Project cost control and earned value management software tracks budgeted, planned and actual cost and schedule performance on large contracted projects. Government contractors and program offices use it to produce the EVM reports, variance analyses and audit trails that DCMA reviews and OMB mandates require on qualifying projects.
Buy the EVM engine and its government reporting; if anything gets built, it is the validation and consolidation layer feeding it, as AEP did.
Build it, buy it, or bridge?
When building makes sense
Building an EVM capability from scratch is possible in principle, since EIA-748 certification assesses an organization's processes and data quality rather than any specific software product, but NASA's own experience shows how hard it is in practice. The NASA Office of the Chief Engineer established its agency-wide EVM Capability Project in 2009 specifically because EVM systems and processes were not well established across NASA, and spent roughly two years and about $2 million piloting it on two real projects, extravehicular activity systems and the ICESat-2 satellite. The first pilot was cut short when the Constellation program was cancelled, and NASA's own review of the effort found that aligning EVM data with the agency's SAP accounting system was a recurring technical challenge. That is the actual difficulty: not the reporting logic, but the data integration and configuration control beneath it, and even that NASA-scale effort still runs on licensed cost-engine software, Deltek Cobra, rather than a homegrown one. A build without that level of institutional investment is unlikely to pass a DCMA review.
When buying makes sense
Buy the EVM engine and the government reporting formats that come with it, and reserve any building for the data-consolidation and dashboard layer feeding into it. Deltek Cobra, Hexagon EcoSys and similar tools have spent years hardening the audit trails, variance calculations and scheduling-tool connectors that a DCMA review actually checks, which is exactly the integration work that NASA's own in-house EVM pilot found to be the hard part. GAO documents many DCMA-certified contractor EVM systems without identifying custom software behind them, which is consistent with the market defaulting to licensed engines rather than homegrown ones. If your organization has a genuine need to build something, build the layer that pulls data from multiple project systems into one consistent feed for the purchased EVM tool, since that data-quality problem is what actually breaks self-built attempts.
The desk read
Build-versus-buy analysis for Project Cost Control & Earned Value Management is being written. In the meantime, the framework that drives every B4 call is on the B4 Index page.
Frequently asked
Can an organization build its own EVM system and still pass a DCMA review?
In principle, since EIA-748 certifies processes and data quality rather than a specific product. In practice, NASA's own multi-year, multi-project pilot to build an agency-wide EVM capability shows how much integration work that takes even for a well-resourced agency.
What actually made NASA's in-house EVM pilot difficult?
Not the reporting logic itself, but feeding the automated EVM tool with reliable budget, schedule and cost data from underlying project management systems that weren't fully established or under configuration control, according to NASA's own lessons-learned documentation.
What does a vendor EVM engine like Cobra or EcoSys actually provide?
Audit trails, variance calculations and connectors to scheduling tools like Primavera P6 that a DCMA review expects to see, refined over years of use across many certified contractor systems, plus the configuration control that NASA's own pilot found hardest to build.
Where should custom development effort go in this category?
Into consolidating data from multiple project and ERP systems into a consistent feed for the purchased EVM engine. That data-integration problem, not the reporting engine itself, is what NASA's own build attempt found hardest to solve.