The Approach to Appraisal • Describing the impacts • Using ASTs • Identifying the impacts • Valuing the impacts • Obtaining a new value

The Approach to appraisal

A method increasingly being used in project appraisal is the Appraisal Summary Table (AST). This provides a mechanism for recording all potential impacts (qualitative, quantitative and monetary estimates) side-by-side, such that the appraisal process is transparent and auditable, and it is easier to compare options.

The following pages describe the processes required to undertake a project appraisal and provides guidance on how these processes can be used. Different processes are proposed for the different types of decision that are likely to be required, but in all cases the general approach is the same. The starting point is always to identify the objectives of the proposed actions, to define the baseline, to compare the alternative actions against the baseline and to select the action that will have the greatest benefit at the least cost.