Project Economics and Management

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• The economic tools needed for project management and how to apply them.
• The key stages of the project life cycle.
• The decision-making methods used to identify and select project options.
• Analytical methods to deal with risk and uncertainty.
• Strategic approaches to project management and financing.

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Deal with complex economic and managerial issues, both systematically and creatively, and make sound judgements in the absence of high quality data.
• Demonstrate self-direction and originality in tackling and solving problems, and act autonomously in planning and implementing project tasks at a professional level.
• Produce and interpret financial and accountancy data on costs, revenues and profitability and data on wider socioeconomic costs and benefits.
• Continue to advance your knowledge and understanding and to develop new skills to a high level.
• Use computer-based (and web-based) decision making tools to make critical financial and project management decisions.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Demonstrate understanding of the range of economic and management tools used in civil and environmental engineering projects and the research and advanced scholarship that produced these tools.
• Compare the various decision-making tools that can be used in project analysis.
• Critically compare alternative approaches to engineering project economics and management.
• Communicate the outcomes of financial, economic and managerial analyses to project clients.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Effectively use financial spreadsheet models to provide solutions to management problems.
• Understand the importance of team working, project organisation, ethics and EDI.
• Effectively communication through written reports to both specialist and non-specialist audiences.

1. The Project and Policy Life Cycles and Project Organisation.

2. Financial Decision Making and Discounting.

3. Present Worth and Equivalent Annual Worth.

4. Rates of Return and Benefit Cost Ratios.

5. Cost Benefit Analysis: Theory and Practice.

6. Replacement Decisions.

7. Project Financing and Capital Budgeting.

8. Alternatives to Cost-Benefit Analysis.

9. Approaches to Risk and Uncertainty.

10. Project Costs.

11. Project Management Planning Techniques.

12. Project Management Standards and Methodologies.

Teaching methods include lectures, case studies of completed and current engineering projects (e.g. Crossrail, HS2), guest lectures, formative numerical exercises and online quizzes and a summative computer-based exercise.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Class Exercise

• Assessment Type: Formative
• Feedback: Hand-outs (also presented on Blackboard) and discussed in Class.
• Final Assessment: No
• Group Work: No

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.