During the planning phase of a complex software development project, the project manager conducts a thorough stakeholder analysis and discovers that end users have extremely low tolerance for defects due to regulatory compliance requirements. Based on lessons learned from similar projects where defects caused significant rework and stakeholder dissatisfaction, the project manager decides to invest in comprehensive team training on coding standards, automated testing tools, and premium development environments. This proactive approach will increase the project budget by 15%, but stakeholders have approved the additional investment to ensure deliverable quality. What best describes this increase in project cost?