Engineering Project Management has one major goal: to complete Project within allocated Budget and within planned Time Frame. Generally, Critical Path Method covers time-related aspects, and Project Accounting covers financial aspects. However, the quality of Project Accounting has always the greatest impact on Project Management’s ability to control properly all project cost expenditures and funding.

Complex and long-duration engineering projects require better Project Accounting than the customary one, supplemented by Project Cost Control. Described in this book, new Project Accounting is similar to Business Accounting. Both utilize journals, ledgers, trial balance, generate financial-cost statements, and are based on the dual-entry method (DEBIT=CREDIT). Additionally, this new Project Accounting covers also time-cost aspects of engineering projects.


PROJECT ACCOUNTING consists of four major parts:

o FORECASTS – comprising cost estimates and change orders, supplying BUDGET created from First Forecast plus Prorates and Contingency.
o ACTUALS – comprising Project Progress information.
o BOOKINGS – comprising billing related to accounts of Project Participants.
o COMMITMENTS – comprising data about monetary funds furnished by Project Sponsors.


Today every EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) engineering project employs the Cost Engineer and the Accountant. The Cost Engineer manages BUDGET, FORECAST and ACTUALS, using routines of Project Cost Control, where the single-entry method is utilized. The Accountant manages BOOKINGS and COMMITMENTS, using the Business Accounting, where the dual-entry method is utilized.

However, on complex and long-duration projects, the dual responsibility for the project financial planning and cost control - where Cost Engineer is not fully knowledgeable neither responsible for BOOKINGS and COMMITMENTS - often leads to completion delays and costly overruns of the budget.

Today on financial matters, Project Manager still depends more on his Accountant than on his Cost Engineer. The Accountant supplies (unfortunately often late) very exact dollar and cent figures about costs incurred, bills received and paid to whom and when (BOOKINGS), and about project funds received and disbursed (COMMITMENTS). The Cost Engineer creates BUDGET, deals with FORECASTS, and tracks the work progress of various project elements (ACTUALS) but without any reliable comparison to the equivalent dollar value (BOOKINGS) of the work performed. Unfortunately, this lack of relationship between ACTUALS and BOOKINGS makes the today customary Project Accounting inadequate for complex engineering projects.

As proven by this book, it is possible to have this novel dual-entry Project Accounting system that can successfully replace the inferior Project Accounting system of today. This new system is BUDGET oriented and has accounts designed to handle FORECASTS, ACTUALS, BOOKING, and COMMITMENTS, all within COST ACCOUNTING NETWORK.

Now Project Accounting can be as powerful as Business Accounting. Only dual-entry accounting method can yield financial and time-cost statements, and also supply current ledger information with maximum accuracy and with minimum efforts on part of the bookkeeper. Supplemented with Time-Cost Accounts and with Global WBS Accounts (Work Breakdown Structure) reporting GLOBAL EARNED VALUE that yields GLOBAL EARNED WORK, this new Project Accounting becomes the best tool for accounting of complex and long-duration projects, as demonstrated in Part III of this book.

Because the Project Accounting has also the vital Time-Cost aspects, it is more complex than the Business Accounting. However, utilizing special computer software, the bookkeeping and generating reports (with histograms and S-curves) can be made effortlessly. Although theoretically it is possible for the Cost Engineer to use EXCEL worksheets and its database to handle the dual-entry project accounting, this job would be very time consuming, particularly when calculating the financial and time-cost statement figures of large engineering projects. Hence the supplied TECA computer program (utilizing Generic MS Access database) is the vital part of this book.

Part I of this book covers the theory of this new Project Accounting system based on the dual-entry method. It shows that FORECASTS shall be offset by REQUESTS, ACTUALS by EARNED WORKS, BOOKINGS by PAID WORKS, and COMMITMENTS by AVAILABLE FUNDS -all according to the DEBIT=CREDIT rule, utilizing Generic Accounts and Global WBS Accounts. Journals, Ledgers, Trial Balance, and Commitment Forecast (project cash flow) are explained, referring to the TECA program screens and reports where appropriate.

Part II of this book comprises one tutorial project. Using the simple project - one section of certain 36- East-European Gas-Transit Pipeline - this Tutorial teaches how to create Code of Accounts, how to develop Project Cost Schedule, how to create Budget based on the Cost Estimate, how to shape Forecast Distributions, how to perform bookkeeping using Journals, and how to generate Financial Cost Statements and Time-Cost Reports. Because the reader of this book may be interested to do himself the project accounting and bookkeeping, the tutorial is very detailed. References are made to the User Manual of TECA, contained in Part IV of this book, but also depicted on the program help screens.

Part III of this book contains examples of accounting related to three complex EPC engineering projects:

o The JingHin Nuclear Power Plant in China; 2,400 MGW, having two PWR reactors, with all necessary facilities inclusive of associated Sea Harbor; project duration: six years; estimated cost: 4.8 billions US dollars.
o The Montevideo International Airport in Uruguay, comprising Terminal Building with Control Tower, three Runways with Taxiways, and related facilities; project duration: 30 months; estimated cost: 425 millions US dollars.
o The Safaniya Oil and Gas Offshore Facility on Persian Gulf, comprising Production Platform, Tie-in Platform, Accommodation Platform, and Flare with Connecting Bridge; project duration: 34 months; estimated cost 852 millions Saudi Rials.

Complete accounting and bookkeeping of these projects - inclusive of TECA and Generic MS Access runtime programs - are the software part of this Book. The User can review the project accounting by linking TECA to any of the project database files, where each one refers to some development stage of the project.

Part IV of this book comprises User Manual of TECA. It describes all tasks required to run TECA for cost planning, accounting and bookkeeping of any engineering project. TECA screen pictures illustrate every task. Additionally, TECA Help Screens, displayed by clicking F1