Feasibility work is often treated as a box to tick before funding is released. Treated that way, it produces a document nobody reads and a decision nobody can defend.
A study earns its cost when it changes what gets built. That means asking the uncomfortable questions early: what demand actually exists, what the operating cost looks like in year five, and what happens if the main assumption is wrong by thirty percent.
What a useful study contains
Three things separate a study that informs a decision from one that documents a decision already made:
- A demand case built from evidence, not from the sponsor’s target.
- A cost model that runs past handover — maintenance, staffing and replacement.
- Sensitivity analysis that is allowed to fail the project.
If the study cannot conclude “do not proceed”, it is not a study.
From findings to a decision
The handover matters as much as the analysis. Decision-makers need the shape of the risk, not an appendix of tables: which assumptions carry the outcome, where the thresholds sit, and what would have to be true for the project to fail.
That is the difference between data and a decision.
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