Elyse is joined the world of project governance in 2022 after a 14 year career as a secondary school English teacher in Melbourne. She now works as a cost estimator for the Department of Defence in Force Design Division. In this role she creates probabilistic parametric cost models to provide advice about the magnitude of project costs.
Coming from an education background, Elyse is an advocate for multi-disciplinary teams in project and program governance. She believes including unique perspectives can provide insights that improve the breadth and quality of our advice. In particular she promotes the importance of ‘soft skills’ for technical professionals as critical element of delivering outputs that are accessible to the broad range of stakeholders for our work.
In 2023 Elyse became Secretary on the Canberra chapter of the International Cost Estimating and Analysis Association (ICEAA).
Clearly communicating costs for non-estimators.
Cost estimation is often a mystery to those outside a limited circle of professionals. Early estimates can provide vital data for performing options analysis, setting provisions and managing stakeholder expectations. However, it can be difficult to convince people to accept numbers which, to them, appear as if by magic.
Mastering the communication of cost can improve stakeholder confidence in modelling, raise the profile of the costing profession and support real improvement in cost management across project lifecycles.
Three elements of communication can rapidly improve the acceptance of estimates:
– asking the right questions in the right way to gather quality data;
– providing meaning to numbers through targeted narratives; and
– presenting data that can be understood by those with limited data-literacy.
Good communication builds reputation and trust, helping to embed the value of cost estimators in project governance in the minds of key stakeholders.
This presentation aims to provide guidance to cost estimators on how to produce quality documents and presentations in cross-disciplinary settings. It addresses three mistakes we tend to make as communicators that leads to the omission of cost inputs from the decision making progress. Though targeted to cost estimators, any technical specialist may find this advice transferable for improving communication with other disciplines.
