Time Cost Trade-Off Calculator
Time-Cost Trade-Off Breakdown
| Normal Duration | 120 days |
| Normal Cost | $600,000 |
| Crash Duration | 90 days |
| Crash Cost | $720,000 |
| Max Crash Days | 30 |
| Crash Cost per Day | $4,000.00 |
| Target Duration | 100 days |
| Available Crash Days | 20 |
| Crash Premium | $80,000 |
| Penalties Avoided | $160,000 |
| Incentives Earned | $100,000 |
| Recommended Duration | 100 days |
| Net Benefit | $180,000 |
Summary Statistics
What Is the Time-Cost Trade-Off?
The time-cost trade-off is the classic project management decision of whether to spend more money to finish sooner. In normal conditions a project runs at its planned duration and planned cost; crashing compresses the schedule by adding resources — overtime, extra crews, expedited materials, parallel work — which raises cost but pulls the finish date in. The decision is economic: crash only as long as the cost of saving a day is less than the value of that day, where the value comes from penalties avoided on a late finish and incentives earned for an early one. The marginal cost of crashing rises as the schedule compresses, so the rational plan crashes the cheapest days first and stops when the next day costs more than it returns.
How the Trade-Off Is Calculated
The calculator starts from the normal schedule — duration and cost — and the fully crashed schedule — the shortest achievable duration and the cost of achieving it. The difference in duration is the maximum crash capacity, and the difference in cost divided by that capacity is the crash cost per day: the premium paid for each day saved. The available crash days are the days needed to hit the target duration, capped at the maximum crash capacity. The crash premium is the available days times the cost per day; the penalty savings and incentive earnings are the available days times the contract's per-day penalty and incentive rates. The net benefit subtracts the premium from the combined penalty savings and incentives — a positive number means crashing pays, a negative number means the normal schedule is cheaper. The recommended duration reflects whether the crash is justified all the way to the target or only partway.
Understanding Your Results
Read the net benefit together with the crash cost per day: the per-day figure is the decision threshold for every individual acceleration move, so a project team can use it to approve or reject each overtime request in real time. If the net benefit is positive, the crash is worth executing to the recommended duration; if negative, hold the normal schedule and absorb the penalties — paying them is cheaper than the crash. Watch the available crash days line: when the target is within reach of the crash capacity, the model will usually recommend the full crash; when the target sits beyond the crash limit, the crash can only narrow the gap, and the residual penalty still applies. Sensitivity is worth checking — re-run the model with the penalty and incentive inputs a few percent higher and lower, because contract values often get renegotiated once a delay is visible. In multi-activity projects, apply the same arithmetic activity by activity: crash the critical-path tasks with the lowest cost per day first, and stop when the marginal day costs more than the marginal benefit. That greedy rule is exactly what the model implements for the whole schedule, so teams can extend the logic from the project level to individual work packages without changing the method.
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