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Feasibility studies (as a tool to save money)
We are currently facing a flood of inquiries relating to diverse
environmental issues. We see this as a positive development as
inquirers are, after all, potential customers. It would seem that in
over 25 years in the business, we have managed to get something right.
But, although this type of inquiry requires a fair amount of research
and a great deal of thought and is extremely time consuming and
expensive, it cannot be billed (aka sales development costs).
In our day-to-day lives we behave in a similar way; we go into a
specialized store and have someone spend ¾ of an hour explaining
the latest TV technology to us, only to go round the corner or onto the
Internet and buy the same product at a cheaper price. This is of course
not satisfactory, or else disastrous for well-trained experts, whose
numbers are slowly dwindling as a result.
The point we want to make clear after decades of providing a virtually
free advice service for public interest groups, municipalities and
industry, is that every project should begin with a feasibility study
or preliminary planning phase that considers the alternatives and
provides the customer with a qualified decisional basis for further
engineering planning and a rough preliminary calculation for the
expected cost of the project.
The two most crucial reasons for this are given here:
By far the most potential for cutting costs is in the area of
preliminary planning … not in the details of the subsequent
construction phase.
Source: „Durchgängige Kostenplanung und -steuerung bei kommunalen Kläranlagen“,
Arbeitsbericht der ATV-Arbeitsgruppe 8.1.1, KA 3/98
We just cannot understand why customers are almost entirely ignorant of
this phenomenon – above all, by the way, most of our foreign
project partners who consistently refuse to invest in feasibility
studies.
It is our view as a contractor for environment-related engineering
services that an important criterion with which to establish the
seriousness of a client’s inquiry is a proposal to carry out a
feasibility study or variance analysis as part of a preliminary plan
fee schedule.
If someone is not prepared to pay 5,000 to 15,000 euros for this
crucial diagnostic basis research and preliminary planning, they have
not understood how decisive these initial phases are for the entire
project. Or, to put it differently, someone who cuts costs during the
anamnesis and diagnosis phase of an illness, often ends up paying
double or threefold for the wrong treatment.
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