Exception Report

The Project Board and Management will set limits (or tolerances) on how much time and money should be spent on a subsection of the project. The Project Manager is responsible for reporting against these limits and should let the Project Board know if they will be exceeded. This could be due to any number of "Exceptional" circumstances, for example, finding abandoned mineworks on the plot of land you hoped to build on, or the concrete turning up late when you were expecting to lay your foundations.

 

It is important to notice that the Project Board should be informed when a tolerance is forecast to be exceeded, not when it actually is. Using the above example, you should inform the board when you receive a phone call from your concrete supplier the day before, not at the time when it should be pouring into the trenches! This gives a chance to discuss and evaluate a suitable response to the problem rather than ‘fire fighting’ it once it has occurred (e.g. maybe another supplier can be found at short notice).

 

The Exception Report itself is a report that includes the following:

 

 

The next section introduces the main mechanism for informing the board of progress on the project, The Highlight Report.