Developing WBS

The construction of the Work Breakdown Structure is an essential step in the development of the financial proposal. It is the backbone of the price breakdown and will be used to index the records generated in ECOS.

ECOS imposes a dual hierarchy system for defining the WBS:

• A freely but hierarchically coded Product Tree (PT). This is used to describe the products or services to be delivered in a hierarchical manner. It does not hold cost information in itself.
• Support Functions with imposed hierarchical coding corresponding to the various type of activities carried out for projects (Management, Engineering, manufacturing, integrating, testing,… ).

In most cases the Support Functions found in the dictionary will be sufficient to describe the activities and therefore create the WBS but ECOS leaves the possibility to further split the support functions or even create new ones when the intended activities are not included in the dictionary. These cases are rare and you should always verify first that the envisaged activity is not already covered by the dictionary.

There are many ways to insert PT nodes and to assign support functions including making multiple selections that will allow you to build your WBS faster.

It is also possible to copy/paste branches from one place of the WBS to another. This can be very useful when dealing with multiple phases with recurring activity codes.

Finally, you can create Product Libraries that can be reused for other projects. This allows you to copy not only the WBS but also the assigned durations and resources.

Within the WBS it is posisble to identify the anchoring points of the ITTs to be sent to your N-1 sub-contractors.