Appraisal: understand the impact of transport projects to optimise their benefits

Cost benefit analysis is carried out to assess the benefit of a project for the society. In most countries, such analysis follows strict principles (For example in France: LOTI, 1982 – Royal, 2014).

The expectations

Cost benefit analysis is based on data from diverse sources and requires a lot of attention and rigour.
Beyond the calculation itself, it requires a real expertise to translate the regulatory principles project by project and to interpret the results.
Furthermore, techniques and the regulatory framework keep evolving, and the practionner need to remain at the top of the state of the art to ensure the latest recommendations have been used.

Our approach

Our expert consultants have more than 15 years’ experience in the area of cost benefit evaluations. They have gathered experience for a large variety of projects (highways, conventional railway, high speed rail), in different environment (urban, rural) and for different target markets (passengers, freight). Based on our experience, we focus on three fundamental elements :

• Particular attention is given to the interface between the different components: monetarised values derived from the demand and revenue forecast, capacity studies, infrastructure studies etc. The quality of the analysis is directly linked to the quality of these inputs and their treatment.
• The search for meaning: what elements contribute most to the benefit, who benefits most, who supports the highest cost? Behind the rate of return and the usual indicators, we use the cost benefit analysis as a central tool to understand the strength and weaknesses of the project.
• A systematic external quality control: the calculations are complex, data sources, stakeholders, horizons, scenarios are numerous and therefore the risk of an error is high. We recognize it and systematically implement external controls.

Why choose EXPLAIN ?

Because cost benefit analysis is at the heart of the consultation and decisions process, we guarantee rigour, expertise and quality control for all projects.

Because one of the challenges with cost benefit analysis is its explanation to non-experts, we devote sufficient time to describe and illustrate our calculations and results so as to make them convincing and intelligible and convincing.