This recommended practice (RP) of AACE International describes the definition, purpose, management, and control of schedule and cost reserves on projects being implemented under Electronics Industries Alliance (EIA) - 748 Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) guidelines with a focus on Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), required for projects funded by the United States government. This includes contingency, management reserve (MR), schedule margin (SM), undistributed budget (UB), and authorized unpriced work (AUW). Overall use of management reserve for programs and portfolios are not within the scope of this document. This document elaborates and provides additional detail that is consistent with, however not included in the EIA-748 standard. This recommended practice is intended to provide guidelines from the owner and contractor perspectives and not intended to be a standard.

This RP specifically provides guidance regarding the management and use of management reserve and undistributed budget on projects executed using earned value management (EVM) techniques consistent with the EIA-748 standard. This RP defines the non-time-phased components of the contract budget baseline (CBB) and may be used when project management consistent with EVM tenets is implemented and practiced in a disciplined manner.

In this RP, the cost contingencies are mitigated through the use of management reserve and schedule contingencies in schedule margin. Also, undistributed budget is defined as the amount of the budget of the performance measurement baseline that has yet to be allocated either to control accounts or to summary level planning packages.

This RP covers the scope of EIA-748 Guidelines 14 and 15 entirely and components of EIA-748 Guidelines 8, 28, 29, 30 and 32 regarding revisions and change control (as listed in the National Defense Industries Association (NDIA) Integrated Program Management Division (IPMD) Earned Value Management Systems Intent Guide).