B015977 - PROJECT ECONOMIC EVALUATION

Italian

The course aims to introduce students to the theoretical and methodological foundations of scientific evaluation which are necessary for the architect as the coordinator of the decision-making process of the architectural project and urban plan. The course also aims to provide some basic critical knowledge on the operation and use of the most common evaluation techniques in the field of architectural design and urban planning.

Students regularly attending the course are provided with power point presentations of the lessons in electronic format as well as with specific bibliographic suggestions during the lessons.
Non-attending students are requested to study the following bibliography:
1) Bertin, Giovanni, Decidere nel pubblico, tecniche di decisione e valutazione nella gestione dei servizi pubblici. ETAS libri, Milano, 1989.
2) Florio, Massimo, La valutazione degli investimenti pubblici. il Mulino Bologna, 1991. (da pag. 29 a 70)
3) Faludi, Andreas, I principi dottrinari della pianificazione: implicazioni per la ricerca sulla valutazione, in Lombardo, Silvia (a cura di), La Valutazione del processo di piano, F. Angeli, Milano, 1995.
4) Bentivegna, Vincenzo, Il contributo della valutazione alla razionalità e legittimazione del piano, in Urbanistica n. 105 1995.
5) Bentivegna, Vincenzo, Valutazione e pianificazione strutturale, in Lombardi, Patrizia e Micelli, Ezio (a cura di), Le misure del piano, temi e strumenti della valutazione nei nuovi piani, F. Angeli, Milano, 1999.
6) Bentivegna, Vincenzo, La valutazione dei mega progetti urbani parte prima: il processo di decisione, in Valori e Valutazioni n. 4/5 2010
7) Bentivegna, Vincenzo, La valutazione dei mega progetti urbani parte seconda: la valutazione del coordinamento, in Valori e Valutazioni n. 6 2011
8) Marta, Berni, L’Analisi Costi Benefici - Aspetti di teoria, dispense (disponibili in formato elettronico presso il docente).
9) Directorate-General XIX - Budgets – Evaluation unit “Evaluating EU Activities - a Practical Guide for the Commission Services”, July 2004
http://ec.europa.eu/budget/library/publications/financial_pub/eval_activities_en.pdf
10) CIDA: The Logical Framework: Making it Results-Oriented
http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/CIDAWEB/acdicida.nsf/prnEn/REN-218132726-PPN
11) Marta, Berni, Partecipazione e analisi multicriteri: la valutazione democratica dei progetti, in Fattinnanzi, Enrico e Mondini, Giulio (a cura di), L’analisi multicriteri tra valutazione e decisione, DEI, Roma, 2015.

The course aims to provide the student with the basic logic of the evaluation process, forming a technician equipped with the theoretical knowledge and the technical skills required to understand, control and design an evaluation process supporting the decision-making process of complex projects and urban plans according to European, national and regional regulation.
Learning Objectives:
The course aims to equip the student with:
• theoretical and methodological knowledge on evaluation as a cognitive process for the expression of judgements of value on the available alternatives according to scientific procedures;
• technical and operational skills needed to carry out economic evaluations suited to the different stages of the architectural project and urban plan.
In particular, the course provides:
• the basic concepts of evaluation as a scientific discipline
• the characteristics of the decision-making process of the architectural project and urban plan
• the main, most common, economic evaluation techniques typically used in evaluating the project at different stages and at different scales (from the building to the city).

Fundamental concepts of Economics

The course consists of lectures which develop course issues including the principle of evaluation theory, the use of evaluation in the project’s (and plan’s) decision-making process and the presentation of the main, most common evaluation techniques used in the architect’s professional practice.

Exams are oral.
Students regularly attending the course have 2 possibilities:
• Oral exam on the topics addressed in the course (the power point presentations of all the lectures are provided in digital form by the teacher)
• Students interested in deepening a specific topic can make a written report (theme and structure must be agreed in advance with the teacher) and present it orally, demonstrating a sufficient knowledge of course contents.
Non-attending students are requested to study all the texts included in the bibliography of the course.

• The concept of evaluation and its definition as a scientific discipline;
• Relativity of evaluation;
• Reliability, correctness, and verifiability of evaluation;
• Relationship between decision making and evaluation;
• The decision-making process;
• Main models of decision-making processes with a special focus on rational models;
• Meaning of architectural design from the decision-making point of view: project as a production plan and as a decision-making tool;
• Collective and coordinated nature of the architectural project;
• Complexity of architectural project;
• The problem of uncertainty and forecasting in Architectural design decision making;
• Project and plan as decision-making tools;
• Key features of the project actors;
• The concept of coordination and different types of coordination: hierarchic and collaborative in public-private partnership;
• Main problems of collaborative coordination and possible solutions;
• Different kinds of coordination models in public-private partnership;
• Main roles of evaluation in project’s phases;
• Criteria for project success;
• Classifications of evaluations;
• Main evaluation tools (with a special focus on their pros and cons):
− SWOT Analysis
− Logical framework approach evaluating the project’s relevance, internal coherence, and sustainability
− Financial analysis to evaluate the project’s private efficiency
− Cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the project’s public efficiency
− Democratic evaluation and multi-criteria analysis