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Project Management vocabulary · Budget & Cost

Forecast

Meaning in project management, with examples

/ˈfɔːrkæst/nounCommon term

In project management, forecast means: A prediction of how much a project will cost in the end or when it will finish, based on progress and spending so far.

In Turkish: tahmin, öngörü, projeksiyon

How it is used

Updated regularly and compared with the budget and baseline. Also a verb: we forecast a two-week delay. Project managers speak of the forecast cost, forecast completion date and the estimate at completion (EAC).

Example sentences

  1. Our current forecast is 540,000 lira, which is still within the approved budget.

  2. Finance asked us to update the forecast every month, not only at the end of each quarter.

Common collocations

  • update the forecast
  • cost forecast
  • forecast completion date
  • against forecast
  • budgetThe total amount of money approved for a project, usually broken down into costs such as staff, equipment, suppliers and a reserve for surprises.
  • estimateAn informed guess of how long a task will take, how much effort it needs or how much it will cost, based on experience and the information available.
  • earned valueThe planned budget value of the work actually completed so far. Comparing it with planned value and actual cost shows whether a project is ahead or behind and under or over budget.
  • burn rateThe speed at which a project spends its budget, usually measured per month or per week, often used to predict when the money will run out.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Budget & Cost

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