An Interactive Cost-Schedule/Payment-Schedule Prototype Integration Model for Cost-Flow Forecasting and Controlling

One of the most important aspects of running a construction business is cash flow management. More and more construction companies collapse due to deficiency of liquidity to support their daily activities instead of the failure of the engineering knowledge and skills. Hence, the need for cash flow management has become the consensus among researchers and practitioners alike. Nevertheless, to develop a successful automatic cash flow forecasting and controlling system is highly difficult due to the compatibility of different factors in a project as well as a dynamic process caused by deviations in the progress of a project underway, initiations or terminations of other activities. Insofar, the most fundamental problem is the integration between money and time, that is, integrating the cost database and billing activity payments of subcontractors and supplies along with those of the schedule, and yet there is no such a model existing. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new discrete model to solve the cognitive problem of integrating money and time. This model presented here is unique because it integrates the cost database, billing activity payments, and those of the schedule as a whole.