Introduction

The four chapters in this Part have a common topic and share a collective theme. All of them have infrastructure/transportation projects or programme packages as the alternatives that are the subject of evaluation, focusing on the identification, estimation and assessment of their indirect or cumulative impacts. Some pay particular attention to strategic environmental assessment (SEA) as a prescribed evaluation framework. The essential theme of these chapters is normative evaluation of alterna-

tive courses of action: projects, policies, programmes or possible projectprogramme “packages”. Three of them (Arts and Niekerk; Bramley, Simmonds and Dobson; and Hull) are about a priori evaluation; one (Selicato and Maggio) is oriented more to ex post appraisal. These chapters tell readers how to do it – evaluating alternatives – rather than offering descriptive or analytical insights. Their prescribed approaches, as implied in their adopted evaluation

frameworks, also have much in common. They aim to extend the scope of evaluation, emphasising its holistic and comprehensive aspects. They rise to sustainability challenges, with impact assessments that combine socialequity, economic-developmental, and environmental-future generations considerations. Their aspiration to comprehensiveness raises challenges of complexity: identifying and estimating impacts that are multiple, crosssectoral, and cumulative. Their holistic approach is also reflected in methodological pluralism, which combines qualitative approaches and information with quantitative methods and data. With these commonalities, the chapters divide on another dimen-

sion: their approach to their topic. Two of them (Bramley, Simmonds and Dobson; and Hull) take a methodological approach; they develop and apply a conceptual and operational model to evaluate alternatives

and identify, predict and assess their relevant impacts. Two chapters (Arts and Niekerk, and Selicato and Maggio) take a systemic-management approach, analysing significant aspects of the evaluation process to critique its flaws and prescribing (primarily organisational and management-oriented) remedies. The order of appearance of the chapters that follow is not random. The

first two represent the methodological approach to evaluation; the last two take the systemic-management approach. But the overall sequence of the four chapters also reflects their relative concern – latent and unconscious – with another aspect that is becoming increasingly prominent in evaluation research and applications: institutional design (Alexander, 2005). The first chapter is methodologically the most conventional and hardly

concerned with the institutional setting of its application. The next (Hull) also has a methodological approach, but develops a complex and effective evaluation framework and project structure that shows serious (if not conscious) institutional design. The following two chapters’ systemic-management approach essentially applies institutional analysis to draw institutional design implications. They do this from two widely different perspectives – Arts and Niekerk to optimise risk management, Selicato and Maggio to enable social and institutional learning. This is these contributors’ response to perhaps the salient challenge to evaluation theory and practice today – developing and applying evaluation structures and processes to fit their contexts and purposes (Alexander, 2006: 269-74).