Procurement & finance
Contingency
Money held against identified risks that may or may not occur. It is a control account, not a slush fund — drawn down against a materialised, documented risk, and never against scope creep.
The test is simple and almost never applied: did a risk materialise, and is it documented? If not, the drawdown is a scope change wearing a disguise, and it should go through the process scope changes go through.
And the burn curve is one of the very few genuinely leading indicators in project cost control. Contingency consumed faster than percent-complete is a project in trouble now — not when the cost report eventually agrees.