Forecast your overrun risk.
Turn your project risks into a dollar exposure with expected monetary value, then see whether your contingency actually covers it.
Cost overrun risk uses expected monetary value: for each risk, multiply its probability by its dollar impact, then add them up. That total is your expected exposure. Divide it by the contract value for an overrun-risk percentage, and compare that to your contingency. If the exposure is higher than the reserve, the project is under-protected.
Compare this against your planned contingency. If it is higher, the reserve is likely too thin.
The POD view
Your risks vs your reserve, live in POD.
Contingency Adequacy
PODCoverage ratio
Buffer
Top risks
Prefer a spreadsheet? Download the free risk register — real formulas and cited sources built in.
Download the risk register (XLSX)Risks are not static. Neither is the exposure.
This prices the risks you list today. POD reads the change and cost signals your team already records and keeps the exposure and the contingency burndown moving together, so you see the gap open before it becomes an overrun.
Questions & answers
Expected monetary value (EMV) is a risk probability multiplied by its dollar impact. Summed across all risks, it estimates the total cost exposure you should expect to carry, which is the basis for sizing contingency.
Method & sources
Each risk's expected monetary value is its probability multiplied by its dollar impact; summed, they estimate your exposure, and dividing by contract value gives an overrun-risk percentage. EMV is a portfolio view — it assumes the risks are roughly independent and that many small bets average out. Correlated or catastrophic risks need a fuller model; large-project research consistently shows the tail is fatter than a simple sum implies.
Sources: PMI PMBOK Guide (quantitative risk / EMV) · Flyvbjerg — cost overrun in large infrastructure (reference-class forecasting)
Methodology reviewed by the Plan of Day construction team · July 2026
Your probabilities and impacts — we just sum the exposure.
Watch exposure vs reserve on your project.
POD watches the same cost signals you just typed in and keeps an overrun-risk view current across the whole job, so the warning arrives while there is still budget to protect.
Last updated: July 2026