Course Introduction
Public sector projects involve significant financial, institutional, technical, environmental, and social commitments, making rigorous feasibility assessment essential before scarce public resources are committed. A well-structured feasibility study helps decision-makers determine whether a proposed project is technically viable, financially affordable, economically justified, institutionally implementable, environmentally sustainable, and capable of delivering meaningful public value.
This course provides a comprehensive framework for preparing, reviewing, and using public sector project feasibility studies. It examines the analytical disciplines required to move from an initial project concept to a robust investment proposition, covering demand assessment, options analysis, technical feasibility, financial modelling, economic appraisal, institutional capacity, implementation arrangements, risk analysis, environmental and social considerations, and sustainability.
Participants will learn how to structure feasibility studies that provide credible evidence for investment decisions and project preparation. The course explores how to define the problem and development need, establish project objectives, analyse demand, compare alternative solutions, estimate capital and operating costs, assess financing requirements, and evaluate the likely benefits and risks of different implementation options.
The programme places particular emphasis on the distinction between financial and economic analysis. Participants will examine financial affordability, fiscal implications, cash flows, investment returns, economic costs and benefits, externalities, opportunity costs, distributional effects, and broader social value. They will also learn how sensitivity and scenario analysis can reveal the effects of uncertainty on project viability and investment decisions.
Modern feasibility studies must increasingly address climate resilience, environmental and social safeguards, digital transformation, demographic change, technology choices, institutional reform, private-sector participation, innovative financing, and long-term operational sustainability. The course therefore integrates these considerations into the feasibility process, helping participants develop studies that remain relevant in complex and changing public-sector environments.
By the end of the course, participants will be able to structure comprehensive feasibility studies, assess evidence critically, identify weaknesses in project proposals, interpret financial and economic models, evaluate implementation readiness, and formulate clear investment recommendations. The programme is designed to improve the quality of public investment decisions and strengthen the pipeline of projects that are technically sound, financially realistic, economically justified, institutionally viable, and sustainable.
Duration
5 days
Who Should Attend
-
Public sector project managers responsible for project preparation and investment decisions
-
Government planning and policy officials involved in project identification and appraisal
-
Public investment management professionals responsible for assessing project proposals
-
Finance and budget officers evaluating project affordability and fiscal implications
-
Economists conducting economic appraisal and cost-benefit analysis
-
Project feasibility and investment appraisal specialists
-
Engineers, architects, quantity surveyors, and technical professionals preparing project studies
-
Infrastructure and capital investment planning professionals
-
Procurement and contract specialists involved in project preparation and delivery strategy
-
Monitoring, evaluation, and investment performance professionals
-
Environmental and social specialists supporting project feasibility assessments
-
Development finance and public investment professionals reviewing government projects
-
Consultants preparing or reviewing public sector feasibility studies
-
Senior government decision-makers responsible for project prioritisation and investment approval
-
Professionals involved in public-private partnerships and infrastructure investment development
Course Objectives
-
Develop participants’ ability to structure, commission, prepare, review, and interpret comprehensive feasibility studies for public sector projects before major investment decisions are made.
-
Strengthen the capacity to define development problems, assess needs, establish project objectives, identify beneficiaries, and demonstrate the strategic rationale for proposed public investments.
-
Equip participants with practical techniques for assessing alternative project solutions and comparing technical, financial, economic, institutional, environmental, social, and implementation considerations.
-
Improve participants’ ability to evaluate project financial feasibility through capital costing, operating costs, revenue analysis, cash-flow projections, financing structures, affordability, and fiscal impact assessment.
-
Build practical competence in economic appraisal, including cost-benefit analysis, economic costs and benefits, opportunity costs, externalities, distributional effects, and development value.
-
Strengthen participants’ ability to assess technical feasibility, implementation requirements, technology choices, infrastructure needs, operating models, project readiness, and long-term asset requirements.
-
Develop practical approaches for analysing institutional capacity, governance arrangements, implementation responsibilities, staffing requirements, coordination mechanisms, and organisational readiness.
-
Enhance participants’ ability to identify, quantify, analyse, and manage financial, technical, institutional, environmental, social, climate, procurement, and implementation risks affecting project viability.
-
Strengthen the use of sensitivity analysis, scenario analysis, assumptions testing, uncertainty assessment, and risk-adjusted decision-making when evaluating complex public investment proposals.
-
Enable participants to prepare clear feasibility conclusions and investment recommendations that support transparent, evidence-based decisions on whether and how public projects should proceed.
Comprehensive Course Outline
Module 1: Foundations of Public Sector Project Feasibility Studies
-
Understanding the purpose, scope, structure, and decision-making role of feasibility studies within public investment and project development processes.
-
Distinguishing project concept notes, pre-feasibility studies, full feasibility studies, business cases, investment appraisals, and detailed project preparation documents.
-
Examining the relationship between feasibility assessment, strategic planning, public investment programming, budgeting, procurement, financing, implementation, and project approval.
-
Identifying common weaknesses in feasibility studies, including unsupported assumptions, inadequate demand analysis, incomplete costing, weak risk assessment, unrealistic implementation plans, and insufficient evidence.
Module 2: Project Identification, Needs Assessment, and Strategic Rationale
-
Defining development problems, service gaps, infrastructure needs, policy objectives, beneficiary requirements, and the underlying rationale for public intervention.
-
Conducting demand and needs assessments using demographic, economic, social, spatial, service-delivery, market, and sector information.
-
Establishing project objectives, expected results, beneficiaries, service standards, development outcomes, assumptions, constraints, and strategic alignment.
-
Assessing alternative approaches to addressing identified needs and determining whether a new project is justified compared with policy, operational, institutional, or existing-asset solutions.
Module 3: Options Analysis and Technical Feasibility
-
Identifying and comparing technical, operational, technological, geographic, design, capacity, location, and service-delivery alternatives for achieving project objectives.
-
Assessing site conditions, technical requirements, infrastructure systems, technology choices, implementation methods, resource requirements, and operational arrangements.
-
Evaluating lifecycle considerations including construction, commissioning, operations, maintenance, rehabilitation, replacement, scalability, resilience, and decommissioning.
-
Developing evidence-based technical recommendations that balance performance, affordability, quality, sustainability, resilience, implementation complexity, and long-term operational requirements.
Module 4: Financial Feasibility, Costing, and Fiscal Affordability
-
Developing comprehensive capital and operating cost estimates covering project preparation, construction, equipment, staffing, operations, maintenance, financing, contingencies, and lifecycle requirements.
-
Preparing financial models incorporating revenues, expenditures, cash flows, financing sources, funding gaps, affordability constraints, and long-term financial sustainability.
-
Assessing fiscal implications including government funding requirements, debt obligations, recurrent expenditure impacts, guarantees, subsidies, and future budget commitments.
-
Applying financial indicators and affordability tests to determine whether projects can be financed and sustained within realistic public-sector resource constraints.
Module 5: Economic Appraisal and Public Value Assessment
-
Distinguishing financial analysis from economic analysis and understanding how public investment decisions should consider wider economic and social effects.
-
Identifying, valuing, and comparing economic costs and benefits, including opportunity costs, externalities, productivity effects, time savings, employment impacts, and service improvements.
-
Applying cost-benefit analysis, economic rates of return, net present value, cost-effectiveness analysis, and other appropriate economic appraisal techniques.
-
Assessing distributional impacts, social value, regional development effects, equity considerations, and broader public benefits that may not appear in financial cash flows.
Module 6: Institutional, Governance, and Implementation Feasibility
-
Assessing the institutional environment, organisational mandates, implementation responsibilities, management capacity, staffing requirements, coordination arrangements, and decision-making structures.
-
Evaluating whether implementing institutions have the technical, managerial, financial, procurement, operational, and governance capacity required to deliver the proposed project.
-
Developing implementation arrangements covering project governance, project management structures, stakeholder responsibilities, reporting systems, procurement approaches, and institutional strengthening requirements.
-
Identifying institutional constraints and developing practical measures to improve implementation readiness, accountability, coordination, ownership, and long-term operational sustainability.
Module 7: Environmental, Social, Climate, and Sustainability Assessment
-
Integrating environmental and social considerations into feasibility studies, including resource use, pollution, land, communities, livelihoods, inclusion, health, safety, and social impacts.
-
Assessing climate risks, resilience requirements, adaptation measures, emissions considerations, disaster exposure, and the long-term environmental sustainability of project options.
-
Evaluating social inclusion, gender responsiveness, accessibility, vulnerable groups, community impacts, stakeholder concerns, and potential distributional consequences.
-
Incorporating mitigation, management, monitoring, safeguards, sustainability measures, and lifecycle resilience requirements into the preferred project option and implementation plan.
Module 8: Risk, Uncertainty, Sensitivity, and Scenario Analysis
-
Identifying project risks across financial, economic, technical, institutional, procurement, environmental, social, climate, operational, legal, and implementation dimensions.
-
Developing structured risk registers that connect risk events, causes, consequences, likelihood, impact, ownership, mitigation measures, contingencies, and monitoring requirements.
-
Applying sensitivity analysis to test the effects of changes in costs, benefits, demand, implementation periods, financing assumptions, discount rates, and other critical variables.
-
Using scenario analysis and uncertainty assessment to evaluate project resilience under alternative economic, fiscal, technical, climate, market, and implementation conditions.
Module 9: Feasibility Study Preparation, Review, and Investment Decisions
-
Structuring comprehensive feasibility reports that clearly present the problem, alternatives, analysis, assumptions, findings, risks, implementation arrangements, financing requirements, and recommendations.
-
Establishing quality assurance and independent review processes to test the completeness, credibility, consistency, transparency, and robustness of feasibility study evidence.
-
Translating feasibility findings into investment recommendations, project approval conditions, financing strategies, implementation priorities, and project preparation requirements.
-
Developing decision-making frameworks that distinguish between projects ready to proceed, projects requiring further analysis, projects requiring redesign, and proposals that should not advance without stronger evidence.
Module 10: Emerging Issues and the Future of Public Sector Feasibility Studies
-
Examining how climate change, fiscal pressures, demographic shifts, technological disruption, urbanisation, and changing public service needs are transforming project feasibility assessment.
-
Applying digital tools, artificial intelligence, data analytics, geospatial information, digital twins, automated modelling, and scenario platforms to strengthen feasibility analysis and decision support.
-
Assessing emerging financing and delivery models including public-private partnerships, blended finance, climate finance, development finance, innovative procurement, and outcome-oriented investment structures.
-
Strengthening future feasibility studies through integrated lifecycle thinking, resilience assessment, adaptive design, sustainability analysis, evidence-based decision-making, and continuous improvement of public investment systems.
Training Approach
This course will be delivered by our skilled trainers who have vast knowledge and experience as expert professionals in the fields. The course is taught in English and through a mix of theory, practical activities, group discussion and case studies. Course manuals and additional training materials will be provided to the participants upon completion of the training.
Tailor-Made Course
This course can also be tailor-made to meet organization requirement. For further inquiries, please contact us on: Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com Tel: +254 721 331 808
Training Venue
The training will be held at our Upskill Training Centre. We also offer training for a group (at a discount of 10% to 50%) at requested location all over the world. The Onsite course fee covers the course tuition, training materials, two break refreshments, buffet lunch, airport transfers, Upskill gift package, and guided tour.
Visa application, travel expenses, dinners, accommodation, insurance, and other personal expenses are catered by the participant
Certification
Participants will be issued with Upskill certificate upon completion of this course.
Airport Pickup and Accommodation
Airport pickup and accommodation is arranged upon request. For booking contact our Training Coordinator through Email: training@upskilldevelopment.com, +254 721 331 808
Terms of Payment:
Unless otherwise agreed between the two parties’ payment of the course fee should be done 3 working days before commencement of the training so as to enable us to prepare better.
