In engineering utopia, the unknown would be known, designs would be efficient, construction crews would have realistic schedules, and the project would be completed within the estimated budget. Too often this is not reality. It is not unusual for a project’s actual cost to exceed the budget by as much as 50%. The greatest opportunity to control cost and schedule is at the project’s earliest stage, the predesign phase. A project team that fails to start the control process at this early phase often experiences “cost creep,” the insidious inching upward of a project’s cost during implementation (see Box). This gap between utopia and reality can be bridged. Cost creep can be controlled.