Building a tool to assess the viability of development sites
Be First required a viability appraisal tool that would take projects from Idea Stage to Contract Award and inform stakeholders along the way. All three stakeholders had different strategic goals so the tool needed to be tailored to each to reflect their interest.
The Role
We were asked to produce an excel template that interactively guides project managers through a development site viability appraisal. We built the template with functionalities that included:
- A Gateway system to reflect the differing appraisal at each stage for example, high level at Idea stage (Gateway 1) to more detailed at the Award Contract stage (Gateway 4):
- Interactive guidance for tool users
- Viability metrics from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including the Council and the Developer.
- Output tables, graphs and summarised cash flows bespoke to the clients needs and reporting methods.
Key Outcomes
This assignment allows LBBD to assess the viability of individual projects on a consistent basis and use the detailed site data to create a borough-wide view of development and regeneration.
