Case Study: SMA Consulting achieves greater cost and schedule certainty for Edmonton LRT with Palisade @RISK

RISK Enables Powerful Project Management for Edmonton Light Rail Transit System

SMA Consulting was engaged by the City of Edmonton to quantify costs and schedule uncertainty for a major Light Rail Transit expansion and provide decision-makers with a reliable range of outcomes. To meet this challenge, SMA Consulting used Palisade’s @RISK to move beyond single-point estimates and model the many uncertainties affecting a multi‑hundred‑million‑dollar construction program.

Using Palisade @RISK integrated with Microsoft Excel and Project, SMA categorized risks (general uncertainty, escalation, and specific risk events), applied heuristics to build probability distributions, and ran Monte Carlo simulations to produce probabilistic cost and schedule forecasts. The analysis let the city pick an 85th‑percentile budget for greater certainty—an estimate that proved highly accurate, coming in within 2% of the awarded construction contract—demonstrating Palisade’s impact on cost and schedule confidence.

SMA Consulting

Jesse Kostelyk

Risk and Project Controls Manager