The Global Risks Alliance (GRA)
Most infrastructure in developing economies is financed through the budget, public enterprises and sovereign borrowing, with development banks as lenders and advisers. Whether a project delivers depends largely on what happens before financing: identification, feasibility, appraisal, selection, procurement design, land and safeguards preparation. This page sets out how project risk develops through the preparation cycle, which records evidence it, and who decides at each gate.
GRA · Established · service level R0
Project preparation is the work before financing that decides whether an infrastructure project delivers: feasibility, design, appraisal, safeguards and procurement planning. Optimism at appraisal and preparation gaps become delays and cost overruns, procurement shapes risk transfer and maintenance decides the long-term return.
Where development projects meet hazard and poverty, and which financing layer protects them. Hypothetical projects and design values.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Public investment and projects · Country programme D · Pipeline review 3
| Irrigation rehabilitation | Food and water | Medium | Clear | Appraisal |
| Port expansion | Infrastructure | High | Finding | Preparation |
| SME credit line | Finance | Low | Clear | Board |
| Mini-grid programme | Energy | Low | Clear | Implementation |
red: high hazard exposure
Infrastructure preparation and risks. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Cost estimates and demand forecasts made to secure approval tend to be optimistic. Reference class forecasting and independent review exist because the bias is systematic across sectors and countries, not accidental.
Incomplete feasibility, design, land acquisition or resettlement planning delays the start of works while commitment fees and price escalation continue. Delay cascades into cost overruns, scope cuts and restructuring.
Contract type decides who carries ground, design, price and schedule risk. Poorly packaged contracts, thin bidder fields and weak contract management move risk back to the public client through claims and variations.
An asset built but not maintained delivers less service over a shorter life. Maintenance competes with new projects in every budget round and usually loses, turning a stock of assets into a contingent liability.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Optimism bias | The tendency to underestimate costs and durations and overestimate benefits at appraisal. |
| Project preparation facility | Funding for feasibility studies, design and structuring before investment decisions. |
| Open contracting | Publishing data and documents across the contracting cycle, using the Open Contracting Data Standard. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost overrun at completion | percent of appraised cost | per project | MDB completion reports | OFFICIAL |
| Schedule slippage against appraisal | months | per project | MDB completion reports | OFFICIAL |
| Time from approval to first disbursement | months | per project | MDB operations data | OFFICIAL |
| Bidders per competitive tender | count | per tender | Procurement records in the Open Contracting Data Standard | OFFICIAL |
| Contracts with published award and contract data | percent of public contracts by value | annual | Open contracting publishers | REPORTED |
| Capital budget execution rate | percent of approved capital appropriation | annual | Budget execution reports | OFFICIAL |
| Outcome rating at completion | rating scale (highly unsatisfactory to highly satisfactory) | per project | Independent evaluation units | OFFICIAL |
| Maintenance allocation against asset base | percent of estimated asset replacement value | annual | Budget documents, asset registers | ESTIMATED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| World Bank Projects and Operations data | Approvals, financing, ratings and documents for each operation | CC BY 4.0 |
| Independent Evaluation Group project ratings (World Bank) | Validated outcome ratings from completion reports | CC BY 4.0 |
| Open Contracting Data Standard publications (Open Contracting Partnership data registry) | Tender, award, contract and implementation data published by governments | Open licence declared by each publisher |
| IMF Public Investment Management Assessment reports | Institutional ratings across planning, allocation and implementation | Public where published by the authorities, IMF terms |
| World Bank Benchmarking Infrastructure Development | Regulatory quality of PPP and public procurement of infrastructure across the project cycle | CC BY 4.0 |
| AfDB, ADB and IDB project portals | Disclosed appraisal, procurement and completion documents | Public under each bank's disclosure policy |
| National public investment registers and audit reports | Pipeline status, appraisal documents and audit findings | Public records, terms per government |
Development Finance Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Finance ministries and public investment units | Whether a project is ready to enter the budget or the borrowing programme | Feasibility, appraisal and safeguards evidence by gate; reference class ranges for cost and time |
| MDB management and boards of executive directors | Whether to approve a loan and with which conditions of effectiveness | Preparation status, procurement plan, safeguard instruments, implementation capacity |
| Line ministries and implementing agencies | How to package contracts and allocate ground, design and price risk | Procurement records for comparable contracts, bidder fields, claims history |
| Supreme audit institutions | Whether completed projects delivered what was appraised | Completion ratings, cost and schedule against appraisal |
Public investment can raise growth and welfare, but its returns depend on management. Projects chosen for political rather than economic reasons, designs that ignore hazards, cost overruns and poor maintenance all reduce value. As climate change alters hazards over the life of assets, decisions made today determine exposure for decades. Strengthening public investment management is therefore a resilience measure in its own right.
Project outcomes are shaped at every stage of the investment cycle.
Cost-benefit and multi-criteria appraisal help choose projects that deliver most value. Weak appraisal is a common source of poor outcomes.
Siting, standards and design choices determine exposure to floods, heat and other hazards. Engineering science: Critical Infrastructure.
Underfunded maintenance shortens asset life and raises vulnerability to shocks.
Research on public investment efficiency finds substantial differences between countries in how much value they obtain from each unit spent, and attributes much of the difference to institutions: planning, appraisal, procurement, budgeting and maintenance. Resilience fits naturally into this framework, because the same institutions decide whether hazards are considered and whether assets are kept in good condition.
Established diagnostic frameworks assess institutions across the investment cycle. Results describe systems, not individual projects.
Economic appraisal using economics and development economics, including resilience benefits. Valuing avoided losses requires assumptions about hazard probability.
Screening of project sites against hazard data, using geospatial information systems. Data resolution and future climate uncertainty limit precision.
Evaluation of completed projects, using causal inference and impact evaluation where feasible. Evaluations are often delayed and not always published.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.