IPA Recipient of AACE International’s Highest Corporate Honor for Cost Management Service
ASHBURN, VIRGINIA – Independent Project Analysis, Inc. (IPA) has been selected as the 2016 recipient of AACE International’s top corporate honor, the Industrial Appreciation Award, in recognition of its service to the total cost management professional community.
In a letter announcing IPA’s selection for the award, Jennie M. Cunningham-Amos, AACE International’s Director, Marketing, Meetings, and Membership, wrote, “This is the Association’s highest and most prestigious award given to a corporation and is intended to pay tribute for outstanding service to the cost management or cost engineering profession or to the public as a whole.” Past award recipients include Jacobs, Chevron U.S.A., Inc., the U.S. Department of Energy, Suncor Energy Services, Inc., and the Government Accountability Office.
IPA will receive the award at AACE International’s 2016 Annual Meeting, June 26-29, in Toronto, Canada.
“We are honored to receive this award,” IPA President Edward Merrow said in accepting the tribute. Adding, “The director of IPA’s Center for Cost Analysis, Luke Wallace, has been the driving force behind much of the progress we have made in supporting and enhancing the cost engineering discipline over the past 5 years.”
Wallace, in a separate statement, described cost engineers as being “critical” to project success. “They see the forest for the trees. Despite the unpredictable nature of projects—especially in recent years, cost engineers are providing reliable and competitive baselines and helping to maintain those targets in execution. Our data also show time and again that projects that have sufficiently staffed their estimating, planning, scheduling, and controls succeed, while projects that try to skimp routinely fail.”
IPA will also be an active participant at ACEE International’s Annual Meeting, with staff presenting two industry research papers. Alex Ogilvie, Deputy Director, IPA Project Research Division, will speak on his research that explores the concept of projects as chaotic systems by examining the outer tails of a cost growth histogram from more than 1,000 completed projects. Melissa Matthews, Associate Research Analyst, will present her research that looks at project estimates and practices to identify approaches that improve the accuracy of cost estimates during a project’s scope development phase, also known as Front-End Loading 2 (FEL 2).
About IPA
IPA improves the competitiveness of our customers through more effective use of capital in their businesses. It is our mission and unique competence to conduct research into the functioning of capital projects and project systems and to apply the results of that research to help our customers create and use capital assets more efficiently.