Are you experienced at feasibility studies but realise that your technique could be improved?

My Ebook called "SHORACE - How to Respond when Opportunity Knocks" will give you the insider secrets that you need to create Feasibility Studies that will impress your Clients and allow you to charge a premium for your services.

Do you want?

• The power to tailor your feasibility study to suit the circumstances and situation of your project

• The ability to develop your study in a way that it is easy to explain to clients, colleagues and those important funding sources

• The 33 years of knowledge and experience of feasibility studies that is provided in the Ebook

If you do just fill in the form at the top of this page - you will also receive my weekly reports that will provide you with lots more valueable insights into the world of a professional Feasibility Study Expert.

Is your Feasibility Study?

A:-

• Hotel development?
• Hospital extension?
• Housing development?
• Consumer product development?
• Industrial estate?
• Factory extension or refurbishment
• Educational building?
• Port development?

Do you want to make your project successful?

If you just follow the easy to understand principles in my new Ebook called "How to Respond When an Opportunity Knocks" you will not hear those dreaded words that most Project Sponsors absolutely hate to here - "It's not a Project that we can Invest in at the Current Time"

And the best thing is it is free. All you have to do is apply for it by filling in your EMail address and clicking on the Orange box and you will be able to download it straightaway.

My research showed that you need to go through the whole Shorace Process involving 5 basic project steps in order to get your project built. The first three of these 5 Steps concern the project set-up and feasibility stages.

Each of the 5 Steps are all described in detail in the Shorace Ebook.but it concentrates on the first three because this web site is all about feasibility studies and not project management.

For many readers the importance of Step 1 in the process may be absolutely paramount because you do not have the funds required to actually undertake the Feasibility Study.

Preparation of the Project Shell can be undertaken without any professional assistance and will normally cost nothing apart from the time taken by to actually write it - it is done "In-house" as it should be in most cicumstances.

Then when the Shelldocument is complete you will be able to take it to your bank or any other potential funding sources to get the funding for the feasibility study.

I will tell you more about the Shorace process in a minute or so but in the meantime let's look at:

The Historical background to feasibility studies

The term feasibility study is quite modern and only really took central stage in the project planning process in the 1960's and 70's.

There are hundreds of definitions of what a feasibility study is on the Internet and in project management literature.

In every case the definition and any recommended study content is biased towards the background and personal experience of the author.

Even the term "Feasibility" is a misnomer in iteself because all the studies that go under the title "Feasibility study" invariably concentrate on "viability" and not "feasibility".

We all know that just about anything is feasible if enough resources and money are flung at a problem.

What about templates?

You may have considered the purchase of templates from one of the many websites that offer them. The problem with templates is that they do not help you to fundamentally understand the project implementation process. If you understand the process it will take no time at all to develop your own pro-formas without buying expensive templates that in truth are quite worthless.

All the research also showed that if you organise the feasibility study development process in the right way the studies that you need will be cheaper and a lot more focussed on the primary issues.

The Project Preparation Phase is the one that is most often neglected and it is the most important by far.

To ensure project success you also need to use other modern techniques known as:

Value Managment and Risk Management

Value Management provides the means to define and deliver project value.

Risk Management provides assurance that the set-up and delivery of the project will avoid the destruction of value.

Both these concepts seem to have accumulated a reputation for difficulty and complexity that is unjustified because both are essential ingredients of modern project management.

How to use them without undue complication is laid out in simple steps in the Ebook.

The best project development systems

The best systems always include clear go / no-go decisions at the end of every project stage that involve senior management.

Even if your firm does not regularly develop projects then the same underlying principles apply. You would be able to put in place a process that is tailored just for your one-off project and that can then be adopted for the general benefit of your firm in future projects.

Some of you might be thinking "OK but what is Value Management"

It is one of those abstract concepts that are difficult to describe in a few words.

One of the most easily understood descriptions is that:-

"It is the process whereby best value is obtained by balancing the use of resources on one hand and perfection on the other"

There are no magic bullets that can achieve this balance but there are various techniques that have been integrated into the project development process as described in the Ebook.

The fundamentally important thing about value management is that it should be a major factor in the feasibility study stages of a project.

What is risk management?

In his report called Trusting the Team that proposed various improvments to the construction industry Sir Michael Latham said:-

"Risk can be managed, minimised, shared, transferred or accepted. It cannot be ignored"

It is an axiomatic truth that it is always necessary to take risk to maximise benefits

The integration of risk management into the feasibility study process gives senior managers the comfort that risk will be controlled and the benefits maximised.

Like Value Management the fundamentally important thing about Risk Management is that it should be a major factor in the project inception and planning phases of a project.

Consultants and Value and Risk Management

The only people that can accurately gauge Value and Risk are the line managers in the business - most consultants know "diddly squat" about real operational problems.

The Ebook describes how you can integrate your own firms expertise into the feasibility study process quite seamlessly - even if most of the work is being undertaken by consultants.

Applicability of the process

My experience has mainly been with projects involving construction but nearly all the principle activities described can be used for purely business development projects with a slight change of emphasis from construction studies to financial analysis.

It is very likely that you will need to “tune” the process to suit the requirements of your own business. For instance if your firm is set up on a departmental rather than a project basis – you may feel that the approach cuts right across all your current systems - This should be telling you something important!

But in every circumstances you will be able to easily mould the principles involved to your particular business style and type of work.

Let's summarise

You have probably arrived on this site because you are currently involved in the early stages of a project and want to know more about feasibility studies or are having a problem getting one started.

You will have probably gathered by now that I am a passionate believer in the philosophy that most project failures have happened because the study stages were not carried out with sufficient rigour.

I also believe that the conventional feasibility study approach can be vastly improved very easily and without additional bureaucracy.

The main advantage of the Shorace process is that you will achieve and maintain full control of the feasibility study process from inception to completion. You may still need experts or consultants to carry out some of the technical tasks but you will always remain in control.

On the other hand if you hand over the whole project to a consultant or contractor as is frequently the case you lose control of the process the minute the project starts.

If you want your new project and all future projects to be a success you need to bring yourself right up to date with the most modern practices.

You also need the tools to ensure that the consultants that you use concentrate on the technical areas where your organisation is lacking expertise and do not provide you with hundreds of pages of useless "boiler plate" documents.

And don't forget that every year there are hundreds of businesses that go bust or get into severe difficulties just because a vital project has overrun budget and schedule targets - don't let your business be the next one!

Someone once told me that all successful engineers follow proven systems. You may or may download the Ebook and follow my system but can you imagine how good it will feel if your current project is a massive success!

The fact is that:-

• The Terms of Reference for most feasibility studies are awful
• Most feasibility studies are carried out very badly
• There are loads of projects that should never have been started
• There are loads of projects that should have been a lot more successful

Don't let this happen to you and it won't if you download the Ebook and follow the processes recommended in it.

There is one other thing that I could tell you, but you already know that successful project development is not easy.

You don't have to get the Ebook but it will show you the best way to execute your project. Any person can undertake a feasibility study but intense hard work and the application of cold logic is the only way you can achieve excellent performance - can you do it?

Yours Sincerely

PS I am now including the following in the book as well:-

A Project Classification Tool

This simple tool will allow you to accurately place your project in the minor, medium or mayor categories in a few minutes.

A Graph for the estimation of Step costs

This is another simple tool that will allow you to estimate the fees during the study stage as well as the accuracy of the capital cost estimates during the project planning stages.

A sample of Value benchmarking

This table shows you how to benchmark the performance of critical issues in your industry and how to weight the issues and compare your current project with the benchmark figures - this will then show you the issues that need to be concentrated on to improve your project.

Risk Assessment tables of likelihood and impact

These are useful aids and allow you to undertake the Risk assessment required during the feasibility stages of a project.