Investment is a current bet on future outcomes. Decisions must often deal with limited experience and evidence and with risk and uncertainty.

CSIL teams advise and assist public and private project promoters, funders, and other decision-makers and stakeholders in achieving effectiveness and efficiency when committing resources, human and financial, to a project. CSIL experts support organisations with advice on how to design, plan, evidence, quantify and monetise impacts. CSIL is recognised among the best teams worldwide for its experience in applied Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), with hundreds of projects evaluated, from the small ones at the local level (such as e.g. in manufacturing, transport, water, environmental services, parks and museums) to some mega-projects at a more national and even global scale (such as in transport and research infrastructures).

CSIL can offer:

• Feasibility studies and cost-benefit analysis of infrastructure investment projects;
• Business plan and financial sustainability analysis of productive investments;
• Assessment of costs and benefits of legislations and regulatory initiatives;
• Project appraisal and quality review of project documents and cost-benefit analyses;
• Methodological development of socio-economic impact assessment manuals and guidelines;
• Socio-economic impact assessment, financial sustainability model and cost book of research infrastructures;
• Support the development, testing and improvement of socio-economic impact assessment framework and KPI systems;
• Technical assistance to design and implement public investment management systems and tools, training and capacity building on financial and economic analysis, risk analysis, and feasibility studies.

Our approach to project appraisal is mainly quantitative and strongly relies on cost-benefit analysis, which we understand as a flexible tool that includes demand/needs analysis, technology, financial analysis, socio-economic impact, forecasting and risk analysis. CSIL experts extensively use statistical and econometric tools, machine learning models, and bibliometric and scientometric analysis. Our experts systematically complement the quantitative analysis with qualitative approaches such as impact pathways, case studies and data-driven narratives.