The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) is developing an evaluation methodology to score infrastructure projects against the SDGs to help determine whether governments, the private sector, and civil society are resilient enough for such challenges as the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis has led many to question whether the current infrastructure is prepared to provide acute healthcare and other critical services.

The People-first Project Impact Assessment Tool will enable the evaluation and testing of the quality of infrastructure and public services, including public-private partnerships (PPPs), and the assessment by governments of new infrastructure project resilience. During a virtual meeting on 23 March 2020, UNECE’s Project Team agreed to integrate resilience criteria into the Tool.

The Project Team, comprised of over 100 experts from public and private sectors, academia, and NGOs, was established in January 2020. The Team is working across five areas to define benchmarks or evaluation criteria and a scoring system for people-first outcomes. The five areas being addressed are: access and equity, economic effectiveness, environmental sustainability and resilience, replicability, and stakeholder engagement. The Team is also expected to develop an implementation system to provide a cost-free mechanism through which governments can receive a score for their projects.

The evaluation methodology and implementation system is being undertaken as part of the UNECE’s ‘People-first’ approach to PPPs, through the UNECE’s Committee on Innovation, Competitiveness and PPPs, to make the PPP model fit for purpose for the SDGs.

The Tool aims to be user-friendly for all relevant stakeholders, and applicable to all PPP sectors and project categories, and publicly-owned and PPP projects. A multi-stakeholder consultation process and collaborative efforts are contributing to the design of the Tool to better ensure effective implementation and broad adoption. [UNECE news] [People-first Project Impact Assessment Tool]