This book is designed to introduce designers, engineers, technologists, estimators, project managers, and financial analysts as well as students in engineering and business to strategic cost tools for project cost evaluations. The three main sections are as follows. (1) Cost Relationships, Financial Statements, and Performance Measures-This section describes the relationships between cash flows and profits; the relationships between financial statements and the Purcell Diagram; and the issues of cost estimating, time-based breakeven analysis and time-based earned schedule. (2) Tools for Economic Evaluations-This section considers the basic mathematical relations used behind the economic equations and factors; discrete and continuous interest; depreciation terms and methods; and the Present Value of Principal Approach for evaluating loans. (3) Methods for Project Evaluation and Risk Analysis-This section considers payback periods, present worth analysis, return on investment, internal rate of return, benefit/cost ratios and positive-negative project balances; risk techniques of sensitivity analysis, optimistic-pessimistic analysis, discrete probability examples, and continuous probability models using the normal and triangular distributions.

Autorentext

Dr. Robert C. Creese, Certified Cost Engineer (CCE), is Professor of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering at West Virginia University, USA and recently has taught courses on Engineering Economy, Advanced Engineering Economics, Cost and Estimating for Manufacturing, Manufacturing Processes and Advanced Manufacturing Processes. He has previously taught at The Pennsylvania State University (9 years), Grove City College (4 years), Aalborg University in Denmark (3 sabbaticals) and at West Virginia University for over 31 years. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering, International (AACEI), received the Charles V. Keane Service Award and Brian D. Dunfield Educational Service Award presented by AACE, and has been treasurer of the Northern West Virginia Section of AACE for more than 20 years. He is a Life Member of AACE International, ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) and ASM (American Society for Materials). He also is a member of ISPA, SCEA, AIST, AWS, and AFS. He obtained his B.S. Degree in Industrial Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University, his M.S. Degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and his Ph.D. Degree in Metallurgy from the Pennsylvania State University. He has authored the book Introduction to Manufacturing Processes and Materials (Marcel Dekker, 1999) and co-authored two books Estimating and Costing for the Metal Manufacturing Industries (Marcel Dekker, 1992) with Dr. M. Adithan of VIT University Vellore, India and Dr. B. S. Pabla of the Technical Teachers' Training Institute, Chandigarh, India and Strategic Cost Analysis for Project Managers and Engineers (New Age International Publishers, 2010) with Dr. M. Adithan, VIT University, Vellore, India. He has authored and co-authored more than 100 technical papers.