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Based in Sydney, Australia, Plum Solutions has been providing professional financial modelling solutions since 2004.Read more...
Dear Danielle,
I have attended one of your Plum Solutions courses in Brisbane and am a member of the Linked In group. I have an interview as a financial modeller and have a question I hope you can assist with.
My past modelling experience has mainly been with P&, BS and cashflows but the role is mainly dealing with project models. What are the main distinguishing differences please?
Thanks you for any clarification you can provide,
"Organising trip to Dubai. Trying to work out which flight combination will be least horrendous!"
Based in Sydney, Australia, Plum Solutions has been providing professional financial modelling solutions since 2004.
Fantastic question – I will do my best to answer it, but I’m sure other modellers have additional views to me!
Financial Modelling is a HUGE topic and a financial model could really be anything eg. a management report, pricing model, business case. Project finance is a more specific type of model which deals with modelling for the purpose of long term financing. Your experience with financial statements will certainly come in handy, but you’ll really need to be able to handle the type of modelling specific to project finance, so there will be lots of cash flow forecasting, dealing with assets, and funding. So for example, the sorts of things they might ask you what is your preferred method of modelling for escalation? I.e. when you need to factor in a monthly or annual growth factor, how would you model it? (use a formula like =A1*(1+growth) or would you have a line across the top with the growth factor there? I think either is fine, but you should be able to have a discussion about it.)
You definitely should check out fimodo.com as there are some good articles in there, with a whole section on project finance. Also, navigatorpf.com are THE project finance specialists. They have got some really good tutorials and articles about technical issues such as the above. They also have some good courses specifically on project finance you might want to consider at some stage.
Last week the Plum Solutions Financial Modelling in Excel course was launched as a fully online course, which you might find useful if you feel you need to work more on your technical skills, and you can do it anytime. It focuses on general financial modelling, not project finance specifically of course but the principles and best practice will be relevant. http://www.plumsolutions.com.au/online-courses/financial-modelling-excel....
I hope that helps. Best of luck with the interview!
Submitted by danielle on Mon, 21/12/2009 - 18:00.
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