Monitoring and Sensitivity Analysis

A5.10 The time taken to complete policies, programmes or projects and the benefits achieved relative to expectations should be monitored and recorded. Monitoring costs in public organisations is an important factor in delivering Value for Money. Quantitative evaluation of schemes after implementation is vital for producing realistic estimates of optimism bias to be used in future. Monitoring and evaluation will also support improvements in costs, benefits and timing for use in appraisal.

A5.11 Switching values should also be checked to explore the following questions:

  by how much can benefits fall short of expectations if a proposal is to remain Value for Money? How likely is this?

  by how much can costs increase if the proposal is to remain worthwhile? How likely is this to happen?

  what will be the impact on benefits if costs are constrained?