Urban Project Management and Evaluation

Recommended Prerequisites

Decision Support Systems for Urban Systems.

Teaching Methods

Lectures with the help of audiovisual media where concepts, principles and theories are presented in detail. Practical exercises that meet all the needs of students are solved, with guidelines provided. Assessment of students involves the undertaking of individual assignments and final exam, or final exam.

Learning Outcomes

To acquire expertise in the principles for the evaluation and management of urban projects in an environment where globalization, technology, sustainability concerns and complexity, require that human resources are mainly integrators of systems; to develop high-level skills needed in project management and evaluation, that includes financial analysis, economics, environmental evaluation, cost-benefit analysis, life-cycle analysis and multicriteria analysis.

Competencies:

• to acquire awareness of the need to consider sustainability concerns in all urban projects;

• to acquire sensitivity for the importance of the project life-cycle;

• to know how to use adequate project evaluation methods and software;

• to know how to develop some sensitivity analysis;

• to understand the conflicts that usually exist among multiple criteria decision-making and the need for searching compromise solutions.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Introduction - challenges of managing large projects in the city; systematic approaches; management team; evaluation methodologies taking into account: large scale, long duration, multiple dimensions (economic, financial, social, environmental, technical), risk and uncertainty.

2. Financial evaluation: economic engineering; methods for quantifying profitability.

3. Cost-benefit evaluation: microeconomic fundamentals, intangibles and valuation in monetary values.

4. Multicriteria analysis of projects: criteria definition; data normalization; filtering techniques; aggregation methods, weighted sum, TOPSIS, ELECTRE, AHP, etc.; sensitivity analysis.

5. Life cycle assessment (environmental and economic-financial) of projects and interventions in the built space.

6. Multidimensional evaluation of the competitiveness of cities: environment, economy, society, culture, human capital, markets, infrastructures, municipal management, innovation, etc.

7. Resolution of practical examples.

Assessment Methods

Continuous assessment
Resolution Problems: 40.0%
Exam: 60.0%

Final assessment
Evaluation by final exam: 100.0%

Bibliography

[1] Boardman, A., D.Greenberg, A.Vining, D.Weimer - Cost-benefit analysis: concepts and practice. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

[2] Coutinho-Rodrigues, J. - Gestão de Empreendimentos - A Componente de Gestão da Engenharia, 2ª ed., Ediliber, 2012.

[3] European Commission - Guide to Cost-Benefit Analysis of Investment Projects. Economic appraisal tool for Cohesion Policy 2014-2020. Directorate-General for Regional and Urban policy, Brussels, 2014.

[4] Farr, J.; I.Faber - Engineering economics of life cycle cost analysis. CRC Press, 2018.

[5] Martland  C. - Toward More Sustainable Infrastrusture: Project Evaluation for Planners and Engineers, 2012.

[6] Meredith, J.; S.Manter - Project Management: A Managerial Approach, Wiley, 8th ed., 2011.

[7] Project Management Institute - A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMbok Guide) PMI, 2017.

[8] Revelle, C.; E.Whitlatch; J.Wright. - Civil and Environmental Systems Engineering, 2nd ed., Prentice Hall, 2004.