A robust business case is central to achieving investible projects and goes a long way to ensuring the right outcomes are achieved. Essentially, it’s about whether the figures stack up. Is the scheme good value when all the benefits are taken into account, or would it be better to invest in something else?

All organisations and their stakeholders operate in a complex, interdependent network of environmental factors. Social, economic, political, regulatory, environmental and technological uncertainties all pose risks and offer opportunities for organisations’ ability to realise their core purpose and apply their capabilities.

An objective, robust optioneering and appraisal process goes a long way towards delivering effective infrastructure and securing investment.

Improve project performance

Freed from short-term operational concerns, the business case process can take a holistic view of your organisation’s objectives and any external pressures affecting it, ensuring the chosen solution achieves the desired outcomes.

Far from merely providing ‘concrete and steel’, all organisations involved in delivering infrastructure can have a significant role in creating a future society that is prosperous, equitable and sustainable.

Unlock development by capturing the big picture

The business case process is at the heart of appraising a proposed solution against alternatives and the ‘do nothing’ scenario. To accurately assess the costs and benefits of a scheme, a broad, multicriteria picture must be created of the economic, social and environmental impacts of each option.

Considering a broader set of measures in the cost-benefit analysis than just the immediate utility of new infrastructure tends to unearth some previously unlikely options. Analysis of all outcomes and how they are distributed can reveal an outsized positive or negative effect of an intervention on some sub-groups or regions, for example, while the social outcomes can be monetised using standard guidance to provide a transparent but exhaustive measure of true impact.

Five case model

Business cases are typically structured around the iterative ‘five-case model’, with appropriate detail applied to each case as the scheme proposal develops.