U.S. ATLAS HL-LHC Upgrade Level 2 and Deputies-NSF only Management Mailing List

["Evans, Harold G." <hgevans AT indiana.edu>]

Hi all,

A couple of important points came up in today's NSF L2 meeting. Since not all of you could attend, I'll summarize them below. Please speak up with any questions or corrections that you might have.

1. Presenting BCP and Actuals tables in the L2 talks

A very interesting cross-check on our BCP strategy is to compare costs for BCP-1033 (excluding escalation) with the COVID-actuals we observed in the period 01-Nov-20 - 30-Apr-21. If our BCPs are accurate, these two numbers should agree reasonably well. I have compiled these comparisons at L2 in the attached table. As you can see, the NSF totals agree within 6%. However, individual L2 systems have much larger deviations.

It might be useful for Gustaaf to show the rolled-up comparison in his talk. However, given the spread in L2 results, I'd suggest that we *do not* show the actuals tables in the L2 talks, but rather show only BCP-1033 and BCP-1038 diff's for Direct, Fringe, Overhead, Escalation.

Let me know what the rest of you think.

2. Harmonizing statements in variance reports with numbers in covid BCPs/Actuals

We discussed at length the recent example of inconsistencies between reported covid actuals and statements in variance reports. The conclusion that we reached is that these inconsistencies are inevitable because of the way we report covid-related actuals. The problem is that the COVID-related fraction for each month is entered in the accrual sheet before the actual cost variance (CV = ACWP-BCWP) is known. Since the COVID fraction is a rough estimate of the fraction of that month's ACWP that is caused by COVID, it is very unlikely that it will turn out to be exactly equal to the CV that's actually calculated once the statusing is finished. Thus the numbers that we have will almost never agree with our explanations in the variance reports.

This problem could be fixed if instead of reporting the COVID fraction as a fraction of the ACWP for that month, the anticipated fraction of the eventual CV were reported instead. Thus we would enter, for example, that 100% of the actual CV (whatever it turns out to be numerically) is due to COVID. Then it would be easier for the variance report explanations to reflect the actual variances. However, this method also has flaws in that it's entirely top-down.

In any case, we should bring up these two options to the NSF and ask which they prefer. Neither is perfect but both have some attractive features.

Cheers  -  Hal

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 Hal Evans                        hgevans AT indiana.edu

           http://hgevans.pages.iu.edu/

 Tel: (812)856-3828                    Fax: (812)855-5533

 253 Swain Hall West               Indiana University

 727 E. Third St.                Bloomington, IN 47405

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