For decades, the Project Management Institute (PMI) and its global standards—most notably the PMBOK® Guide—have given us a foundation to measure project performance. Earned Value Management (EVM), with its two pillars Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI), remains a widely accepted way to track progress.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: while CPI and SPI tell us whether a project is “on budget” or “on schedule,” they say nothing about whether resources—the real engine of project delivery—are being maximized. That blind spot has real consequences for mega-projects, where underutilized labor, equipment, and space quietly destroy billions in productivity.

Let’s break this down.

The Good: What PMI Got Right

1.Standardization and comparability

CPI and SPI give a universal language for measuring progress across industries and projects. They allow executives to see, at a glance, if projects are burning money too fast or slipping on delivery.

2. Cost and schedule integration

EVM bridges scope, schedule, and cost into one performance model. This integration is powerful because it prevents “tunnel vision” on just budget or just schedule.

3.Executive-friendly reporting

These indices simplify complex project dynamics into digestible numbers, making it easier to brief leadership, boards, and regulators.

In other words, PMI built tools that work well for governance—but governance is not the same as operational excellence.

The Bad: What CPI and SPI Miss

1. No resource efficiency lens

CPI and SPI are financial and time-based metrics. They do not measure how effectively resources are deployed. A project could be “on schedule” while simultaneously wasting 20% of its workforce’s productive capacity due to delays, poor logistics, or idle equipment.

2.The productivity paradox

Projects can hit budget milestones by throwing more resources at problems. But this masks inefficiencies—overtime costs, redundant crews, and equipment bottlenecks—that ultimately inflate lifecycle costs.

3.Blind to lost opportunities

When welders, scaffolders, or electricians sit idle waiting for access, materials, or inspections, those lost hours are not captured in CPI/SPI. The opportunity cost of what could have been accomplished is invisible in PMI’s framework.

The Ugly: Consequences of Ignoring Resource Utilization

1. Mega-project overruns

Studies (CII, RICS, McKinsey) consistently show mega-projects waste 30–40% of potential labor productivity. Yet governance reports still proudly show CPI = 1.0 and SPI = 1.0, while sites are clogged with inefficiency.

2. No sightline for optimization

Owners and contractors have no metric that tells them: Are my cranes, trades, and workfaces being maximized today? Without this, site logistics, shared services, and whitespace management remain afterthoughts instead of core strategies.

3. Incentives misaligned

Vendors and PMOs focus on reporting metrics, not resource efficiency. This perpetuates a culture where “hitting the numbers” matters more than truly maximizing productivity. It explains why resistance to new methods like whitespace management, shared resource pools, or AI-driven logistics is so strong.

4.Competitive disadvantage

As industries like manufacturing and logistics embrace resource-centric optimization (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma, digital twins), construction and project delivery risk being left behind—still celebrating “green CPI/SPI” while hemorrhaging efficiency.

The Path Forward: Beyond CPI & SPI

If PMI wants to remain relevant in the age of AI and mega-projects, it must expand the framework to include resource utilization metrics. This means:

–Resource Efficiency Index (REI): Measuring actual versus potential productive hours.

–Space Utilization Metrics: Tracking congestion, access conflicts, and idle zones.

–Shared Service Utilization: Monitoring cranes, hoists, transport, and TWE.

–Flow Efficiency:

Quantifying wait times versus work times across trades.

These metrics would give leadership a sightline into lost opportunities—the real driver of project productivity.

Closing Thought

PMI deserves credit for providing the language of governance. But governance alone doesn’t deliver projects—resources do. Until resource utilization is brought into the heart of performance management, mega-projects will continue to show “healthy” CPI and SPI while silently bleeding billions in wasted productivity.

It’s time to evolve: from project controls to resource-centric controls. That’s where the next productivity frontier lies.