Measuring success in post-conflict infrastructure development

Abstract

Infrastructure reconstruction and development facilitates the transition of post-conflict economies to socio-economic stability and financial normalcy. The current system of measuring success is output-based and not a reliable indicator of outcome. Furthermore, standardised output metrics are easily and often abused. However, the outcome of any infrastructure project is by definition retrospective. The post-conflict context makes this particularly complicated. A direct retrospective measure of outcome is impractical, yet any situation-specific outcome-based metric must be current and relevant during construction to be practicable. Causal-chain-derived indicators of likely outcome provide a more relevant metric; the more indicators that point to a common outcome, the greater the confidence of that outcome being realised. This paper discusses an outcome-based causal chain approach to identifying indicator metrics.