RT-410 Evaluating the Implementation and Value of CII Best Practices

Completed: 2026 (Launched: 2023)

RT-410 produced two deliverables, available on the CII website:

• FR-410 — Implementation and Value of CII Best Practices (Final Research Report). Analysis of Best Practice usage and its measured impact on cost and schedule performance across 41 organizations and 74 completed projects. [Link to CII website TBD]

• SP-410 — Why Implementation of Best Practices Matters: New Evidence of the Value of CII Best Practices (Special Publication). A short, data-driven brief for leadership: headline findings, which individual Best Practices matter most, and usage patterns by project type/size. View on the CII Website

• Make the business case internally: high-implementation projects averaged 3% under budget vs. +5% cost growth for low-implementation projects (an 8% swing), plus roughly half the schedule-growth variability — use these figures to justify investment in Best Practice adoption to leadership.

• Prioritize where to invest first: Project Risk Assessment was the only practice with statistically significant gains in both cost (>13%) and schedule (~18%); Benchmarking & Metrics showed the largest cost differential (~18%); Change Management showed a ~10-point cost-growth swing. Start there if resources are limited.

• Check tool adoption, not just practices: the companion SP-410 brief also reports usage of ~10 widely-adopted CII tools (e.g., PDRI led at 54% adoption) — useful for spotting underused resources.

Since 1983, CII has identified and validated Best Practices — proven methods linked to better project performance. Ten years after the last such assessment (2016), RT-410 revisited how widely the current Best Practices are used and what measurable value they deliver, analyzing 41 member organizations and 74 completed capital projects.

1. How widely are CII Best Practices currently implemented, at both the organization and project level?

2. What is the measurable impact of Best Practice implementation on project cost and schedule performance — overall and for individual practices?

• Sample size (41 organizations, 74 projects) limits statistical power for practices with lower usage rates — some individual-practice comparisons rest on small high/low implementation groups.

• Schedule-performance findings were statistically significant only for some practices (notably Project Risk Assessment); cost findings had stronger overall support.

• This is a point-in-time reassessment (first since 2016) — CII Best Practices continue to evolve, so periodic reassessment is expected to remain necessary.

TBD

Chair: Jared Fogleman, Tennessee Valley Authority

Members

• Diogo Cheminski, Alvarez & Marsal

• Kirt Currie, LyondellBasell

• Matthew Hurly, Irving Oil

• Mike Davidson, PTAG

• Stacie Wrobbel, Pathfinder

Academic

• Carlos Caldas, The University of Texas at Austin

• In Bae Chung, The University of Texas at Austin