Jan van den Berg

Author of Investment-Based Project Management: Optimizing Profit Through Strategic Decision-Making

After publishing my book, one question keeps coming back:

What exactly is Investment-Based Project Management?

Here is the short answer: Investment-Based Project Management (IBPM) is a framework for managing projects as investments. It helps Project leaders evaluate decisions not only by cost and schedule, but by the value and profit those decisions are expected to deliver.

The Fundamental Problem

Traditional Project management has become highly effective at measuring cost and schedule performance.

But we still do not measure one thing well: profit delivered.

We track every euro spent. We monitor every day of delay. We measure resource utilization, earned value, schedule variance, and cost variance.

Yet the question that matters most to the business is often left unanswered:

Are we creating the value this investment was supposed to deliver?

IBPM changes that by making value delivery visible, measurable, and manageable.

The Core Insight

BPM treats every major project decision as an investment decision. Not merely cost management. Not merely schedule optimization. Investment optimization.

Most of the time, that return is financial — profit, cost avoidance, contract value protected. But the same logic applies wherever the return isn't purely monetary: a medicine delivered six months earlier, a bridge renovation that shortens traffic disruption by a week. The investment question is the same. Only the currency of value changes.

The shift is fundamental:

The shift is fundamental.

Not "Can we afford this?" but "What is the expected value return?"

Not "Will this delay us?" but "What will this cost in value and profit?"

Not "Are we on budget?" but "Are we creating value?"

The Five Integrated Components

IBPM brings five connected disciplines together. Each one strengthens the others, and together they create a practical operating model for optimizing Project value.

1. Benefits Performance Index (BPI)

Direct profit measurement, not cost or schedule proxies.

Formula: BPI = (Contract Value - Current EAC) / Baseline Profit

BPI tells you instantly whether your Project is creating or destroying value.

·BPI = 1.00 → Delivering baseline profit

·BPI > 1.00 → Creating profit above baseline

·BPI < 1.00 → Profit is eroding

Example: An €80 million mining Project showed BPI = 0.78 at month one. Traditional metrics showed "green" status. BPI revealed €1.8 million in profit erosion. We identified it, addressed it systematically, and recovered to BPI = 1.45 by month twelve—45% profit improvement above baseline.

2. Strategic Buffer Management

Not padding. Not contingency hiding. Strategic investment capital.

Strategic buffers are explicit, managed reserves that enable aggressive optimization while maintaining delivery certainty.

We protect value-creation capacity through deliberate buffer allocation, not through schedule padding or cost-contingency games.

3. Expected Value Analysis

We analyze every compression decision, resource deployment, and risk mitigation through an ROI lens.

Not intuitive. Not experience-based guessing. Systematic probability-weighted analysis of investment returns.

Example: If spending €100K to compress the schedule creates a higher expected value return, IBPM helps calculate that return and make a deliberate decision.

4. Global Resource Arbitrage

Strategic deployment of capability for maximum total value creation.

Not cost reduction. Value optimization through strategic placement of high-value work versus volume work.

Where should your most capable resources work? IBPM provides the framework to answer that question with profit optimization as the objective.

5. Collaborative Execution

Not transactional procurement. Not adversarial contracts. Collaborative frameworks that align incentives around profit delivery.

When everyone benefits from value creation, value gets created.

The Foundation

IBPM builds directly on Stephen Devaux's pioneering work—Drag, Drag Cost, DRED, and DIPP.

Stephen developed the theoretical foundation. He proved that Project value could be measured and optimized. He created the metrics.

IBPM extends these concepts into a complete operational framework. It turns theory into systematic practice.

The Challenge Ahead

The PMBOK Guide now states, three times, that "all projects are investments." Our measurement systems should reflect that reality.

Yet most project dashboards still show only CPI and SPI — cost performance and schedule performance. Neither tells you whether the Project is making money.

IBPM provides the missing measurement layer: the one that connects execution back to business value and answers the question CPI and SPI were never designed to ask — are we creating profit, or destroying it?

That is what Investment-Based Project Management is: a systematic framework for measuring and optimizing what actually matters.

Profit delivered.

If you work with EVM, Monte Carlo analysis, critical path scheduling, or Project controls, IBPM offers a practical way to connect technical Project execution directly to business value.

My book, Investment-Based Project Management: Optimizing Profit Through Strategic Decision-Making, explains the framework in depth and is available on Amazon as a hardcover, paperback, or Kindle edition.

Cheers,

Jan van den Berg