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Economics · Economic Appraisal
Determine whether a project or programme creates net value, and for whom.
For boards, funders and programme owners who need a credible case, not an advocacy document. We appraise projects and programmes against a genuine do-nothing baseline (lifecycle costs, financial and wider benefits, who is affected and when) with assumptions, uncertainty and the distribution of value made visible.
- A credible counterfactual first
- No double counting
- Distribution of value made visible
Trusted by established businesses
The constraint
Where appraisal is the right tool
The common thread: significant resources, more than one possible course of action, and an audience (board, funder or public) entitled to a case that would survive scrutiny.
A capital project seeking approval
A facility, fleet, plant or major asset is proposed. The purchase price is known; the lifecycle cost, the realistic benefits and the do-nothing comparison usually are not.
A technology transformation business case
A platform, system replacement or automation programme promises efficiency. The benefits are plausible but unstructured, and at risk of being counted twice under different names.
A public programme or policy intervention
A government or community programme must demonstrate net public value, including honest treatment of what would have happened without it.
A grant or funding application
Funders increasingly ask the additionality question directly: what does this money make happen that would not have happened anyway? The case must answer it credibly.
A service change or redesign
Consolidating, expanding or redesigning a service shifts costs and outcomes across different groups: some gain, some lose, and the case should say so.
An infrastructure investment
Long-lived assets with benefits spread over decades and stakeholders, where timing, uncertainty and who ultimately pays deserve explicit treatment.
An ex-post benefits review
A project already delivered, and an honest question: did the benefits claimed in the business case actually arrive? Ex-post simply means after the fact, and it is how the next case gets better.
An appraisal engineered to justify a preferred option is not analysis. Experienced funders and review panels can tell. The cases that succeed are the ones that make their baseline, assumptions and losers visible before anyone has to ask.
The approach
The counterfactual comes first
No project creates value in a vacuum. It creates value relative to what would have happened anyway. That 'what would have happened anyway' is the counterfactual, and it is where every credible appraisal starts: usually a do-nothing case (the realistic trajectory without intervention, which is rarely standing still) and often a do-minimum case (the cheapest defensible alternative). Every benefit is then measured against that baseline, not against zero. The same discipline applies to the money itself: spending it here means not spending it elsewhere (the opportunity cost), so the appraisal asks not just 'is this worthwhile?' but 'is this the best available use of these resources?' Get the counterfactual wrong and every number after it is wrong in the option's favour.
What we analyse
The appraisal, end to end
Decisions
Decisions this supports
The appraisal exists to serve a decision-maker with options, including the option of doing nothing.
Commit
Fund, defer or decline
The core call: does this intervention create net value against the counterfactual, and enough to justify committing the resources now?
Choose
Select between options
Comparing genuine alternatives (including do-minimum) on consistent lifecycle costs and benefits, rather than one worked-up option against a straw man.
Steer
Scale, continue or stop a programme
For programmes already running: whether the evidence supports expansion, continuation as-is, redesign or wind-down.
Persuade
Present a case that survives scrutiny
A submission to a board, funder or central agency whose baseline, additionality and assumptions are visible before the reviewer asks.
Distribute
Weigh who gains and who pays
Where impacts fall unevenly across groups, regions or generations, the distributional summary puts that trade-off on the table explicitly.
Learn
Judge delivered projects honestly
Ex-post: whether the benefits claimed at approval actually arrived, closing the loop so the next business case starts from evidence, not habit.
Deliverables
What you receive
- ✓Method statement: how the appraisal was conducted, so it can be interrogated and defended
- ✓Baseline and options definition, including do-nothing and do-minimum
- ✓Impact map: inputs through to benefits, with affected groups at each step
- ✓Cost and benefit register: every effect entered once, sourced and valued
- ✓Appraisal model across the full lifecycle
- ✓Additionality analysis: deadweight, displacement, leakage and substitution addressed explicitly
- ✓Distributional summary: who gains, who bears cost, and when
- ✓Scenario and sensitivity results around the key assumptions
- ✓Benefits-realisation plan for measurement after delivery
How we work
How the appraisal runs
Perspective and options are fixed before any modelling starts: the two choices that most determine whether an appraisal informs or merely advocates.
- 01
Decision and perspective
We agree the decision the appraisal serves and its perspective, whose costs and benefits count: the organisation's, the funder's, or society's more broadly. The same project can appraise differently under each, so the choice is made openly at the start.
- 02
Options and baseline
The realistic options are defined, always including do-nothing (the genuine trajectory without intervention) and usually do-minimum. The baseline is agreed before benefits are discussed, not fitted afterwards.
- 03
Stakeholder mapping
The groups affected (beneficiaries, cost-bearers, and those affected indirectly) are identified, so the distributional picture is designed in rather than bolted on.
- 04
Evidence collection
Costs and benefits are evidenced against the source hierarchy: measured data where it exists, comparable evidence and benchmarks where it does not, and clearly labelled assumptions where neither is available.
- 05
Modelling
The appraisal model is built across the whole lifecycle, comparing each option against the baseline, with every input sourced and every causal assumption traceable to the impact map.
- 06
Sensitivity and distribution
Key assumptions are tested for how much the conclusion depends on them, and impacts are broken down by stakeholder group, so the recommendation carries its own uncertainty honestly.
- 07
Recommendation and reporting
Findings are reported with the method statement, so a sceptical reviewer can follow every step from raw assumption to headline measure, and challenge any of them.
- 08
Evaluation plan
How benefits will actually be measured after go-live: indicators, owners and review points, the benefits-realisation plan that makes a future ex-post review possible.
Scope
What this is, and what it isn't
What's included
- Appraisal against a credible do-nothing baseline, never against zero
- Genuine options comparison on consistent lifecycle costs and benefits
- Additionality tested explicitly: deadweight, displacement, leakage and substitution
- A source hierarchy on every figure, with assumptions labelled as assumptions
- Distributional analysis where impacts fall unevenly across groups
- Honest quantification limits: qualitative treatment where the evidence stops
- A benefits-realisation plan so the case can be tested after delivery
What this is not
- Advocacy analysis: a case engineered to justify a predetermined option
- Formal valuation of businesses, assets or property
- Accounting audit or any assurance opinion
- Specialist environmental, health or legal impact assessment: we work alongside qualified experts where those are required, not in their place
- Statutory approvals, planning processes or regulated submissions themselves: the appraisal informs them
- Boards and executives weighing a capital or technology commitment
- Government and public-sector programme owners building a business case
- Grant applicants who must demonstrate additionality credibly
- Funders and reviewers who need an independent view of a submitted case
- Programme owners deciding whether to scale, continue or stop
- Sponsors of delivered projects wanting an honest ex-post benefits review
- Decision-makers prepared to hear that the preferred option does not stack up
Probably not the right fit
- −Anyone wanting a predetermined conclusion dressed as independent analysis
- −Cases needing only a statutory or regulated assessment: that is specialist territory we support, not replace
- −Sponsors unwilling to define a genuine do-nothing baseline
- −Expectations that every benefit will be monetised regardless of evidence: we will not invent numbers
- −Decisions already irreversibly made, where appraisal would be theatre
Adjacent pathways
Where appraisal connects
An appraisal draws on demand, technology and causal evidence from the streams beside it, and hands its benefits-realisation plan to the systems that will track it.
Economic Impact & Cost-Benefit Analysisthe appraisal layer
Owns: counterfactual and options · lifecycle costs and benefits · additionality · distributional analysis.
Economic Impact & Cost-Benefit AnalysisProduct, Innovation & Technology Economics
When it comes into play
The option being appraised is a product or technology investment.
What it owns
Build, buy and adopt economics for products and technology.
Relationship to Economic Impact & Cost-Benefit Analysis
That stream shapes the investment options; the appraisal tests whether the chosen one creates net value.
Proof
Selected work.
Payment Processing Cost Reduction. An ecommerce retailer was losing a significant percentage of revenue to payment processing and invoice platform fees. Web Lifter redesigned the entire sales and payment workflow, replacing Stripe and Paycove with a direct Westpac PayWay integration and a custom-built invoicing platform. The new architecture reduced transaction costs, streamlined operations, and delivered immediate profit improvements without requiring any increase in sales volume.
Read the caseWhat clients say
“We can't recommend Web Lifter highly enough … a digital partner who could understand our operations, connect the dots between marketing and backend systems, and deliver real results.”
Questions
Common questions
Fit
Having a preference is normal; engineering the analysis to protect it is where cases fail. Our approach makes the baseline, assumptions and evidence sources visible, then lets the comparison land where it lands. If the preferred option genuinely stacks up, it emerges with a far stronger case than advocacy could have produced, and if it does not, you find out before the money is committed rather than after.
No. The discipline comes from public-sector appraisal practice (counterfactuals, additionality, distributional analysis) but it applies equally to boards weighing capital projects, technology transformations and funding decisions. Private-sector cases fail for the same reasons public ones do: no honest baseline, benefits counted twice, and losers left out of the picture.
After delivery, when there is a genuine appetite to learn, and ideally when the original case included a benefits-realisation plan to measure against. An ex-post review tests whether the claimed benefits arrived, why any didn't, and what that means for the next case. Organisations that never look back tend to approve the same optimism repeatedly.
Method & terms
What would have happened anyway, without the intervention. It is usually expressed as a do-nothing case (the realistic trajectory with no action, which is rarely 'everything stays the same') and often a do-minimum case, the cheapest defensible alternative. Every benefit in the appraisal is measured against that baseline, because a benefit that would have arrived regardless is not a benefit of the project.
The same benefit claimed twice under different names: for example, counting a productivity gain and also the wage uplift that flows from that same gain, as though they were separate. The cost and benefit register prevents it structurally: every effect gets exactly one entry, one source and one valuation, so overlaps have to be reconciled rather than quietly accumulated.
Net present value converts all future costs and benefits into today's dollars (reflecting that a dollar in ten years is worth less than one now) and reports the net result; positive means the benefits outweigh the costs on that perspective. The benefit-cost ratio expresses benefits per dollar of cost, which helps when comparing options of different sizes. Neither is automatic: measures are chosen for what the decision needs, and a ratio computed from weak evidence is precision theatre.
Evidence & quantification
Then it is not forced into a number. Some effects (confidence, cohesion, amenity) can sometimes be valued with established non-market methods, and many cannot. Where the evidence will not support quantification, the appraisal says so and treats the effect qualitatively but visibly: described, attributed and weighed in the recommendation. An honest 'unquantified but material' is worth more to a reviewer than an invented dollar figure.
A description of the intervention, the decision and decision-maker (or funder) it serves, the options being considered, your current view of the baseline, the timeline, the main stakeholder groups, and what evidence already exists. That is enough to scope the work honestly, including telling you if a full appraisal is more than the decision needs.
Boundaries & next steps
Not in their specialist or statutory form. Where an appraisal touches environmental, health or legal impacts, those assessments belong with qualified experts in each field. We structure the economic appraisal around their findings and work alongside them, not in their place.
The benefits-realisation plan turns the case into something measurable: indicators, owners and review points for the benefits claimed. From there, benefits tracking can be built into a governed measurement layer, and, where attribution genuinely matters, a later econometric evaluation can test whether the intervention caused the outcomes the case predicted.
Appraise it honestly