Feasibility & highest-and-best-use analysis
Deciding whether a project is worth building, and what should be built on a given site. The layer above the metrics: it takes what a site can legally yield, stacks the costs against the revenues period by period, and turns that into a go / no-go and a recommended scheme. Assumes the metrics themselves are already understood (see valuation-project-economics) and that the spreadsheet mechanics are in place (see financial-modelling-excel).
Needed across
What you will be able to answer
A developer is bidding for a city-centre plot and has asked what it is worth to them. A metropolitan authority is planning a bus terminal on a similar plot and has asked whether it is viable. Is that the same piece of work?
The machinery is the same and the question at the end is not. Both start from what the plot can legally hold — FSI, ground coverage, setbacks — convert that to saleable or usable area, and stack land, construction, approvals, finance and contingency against a phased revenue line to produce a cash flow. For the developer you then run that backwards: take the finished value, strip out costs and the profit the deal has to earn, and what remains is the most they can bid — and you test two or three alternative schemes to see which use the site actually rewards. For the authority the same cash flow will come back negative, because the returns are mostly not cash. There the answer is not no-go but how the gap is closed — viability gap funding, a PPP structure, or a value-capture component — and the reasoning ends up in the DPR that funds it.
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Course outline
Learn from selected clips, concept by concept
Concept 1
What a feasibility study actually decides
Concept 1 · What a feasibility study actually decides
Concept 2
What the site can legally hold
After: what-feasibility-answers
FSI, ground coverage and setbacks turned into an actual buildable number for a plot.
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Concept 3
Everything the project costs, not just construction
After: what-the-site-can-yield
The full stack of cost heads a development carries, laid out side by side.
Video title and channel appear once unlocked.
Concept 4
The pro forma: costs and revenues, period by period
After: development-cost-stack, what-the-site-can-yield
A development laid out across its programme — money out, money in, and the net line that falls out of it.
Video title and channel appear once unlocked.
Concept 5
Working backwards to what the land is worth
After: development-pro-forma
Finished value, minus costs, minus the profit the deal has to earn — and what is left is the land.
Video title and channel appear once unlocked.
Concept 6
Highest and best use: which scheme the site rewards
After: residual-land-value
Alternative uses for one site, run against four tests until one survives all of them.
Video title and channel appear once unlocked.
Concept 7
Stress-testing the answer
After: development-pro-forma
Key inputs moved one at a time, and a grid showing how far the answer travels.
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Concept 8
When a needed project does not pay for itself
After: development-pro-forma
What an authority does with a project whose cash flow is negative and whose case is still sound.
Video title and channel appear once unlocked.
Concept 9
Where the analysis lands: the DPR
After: development-pro-forma, sensitivity-and-scenarios
The document a public project is actually funded from, and which part of it this analysis becomes.
Video title and channel appear once unlocked.
Selection criteria
- Teaches one concept end to end, without needing the rest of the video
- Speaker does this work, or teaches it to people who will
- Transfers to Indian practice, or is marked where it does not
- Audio and screen legible on a phone, on mobile data
What was rejected
9 candidates did not meet the course criteria.
- This video is primarily a software walkthrough and product promotion for a proprietary feasibility spreadsheet template.
- This video is primarily a sales pitch for AI consulting services rather than an instructional video on feasibility studies.
- Focuses primarily on FAR definition and free-of-FAR exemptions rather than combining FAR with other site controls like setbacks or ground coverage.
- Lacks coverage of land acquisition, marketing, and contingency cost heads.
- Shows only a static total-cost vs total-revenue comparison with no phasing
- does not explain the backwards logic
- is the residual method for valuation of supply under GST or other indirect tax
- Promotional course summary video that outlines curriculum topics rather than providing instructional depth or worked mechanics.
- The video discusses infrastructure project life cycles and frameworks rather than walking through the specific sections and contents of a Detailed Project Report (DPR).
Where this skill is used
Planner — Metropolitan / Development Authority (DDA, MMRDA, HMDA, CIDCO)
Planning roles inside large urban development authorities and parastatals that build and regulate metro-scale development — master plans, town-planning schemes, land development, and large infrastructure projects. Often better-resourced and better-paid than small-state T&CP. Specialisation tags: Urban, Infrastructure, Transport.
10 mapped employers
Explore path →Real-Estate Development / Land Advisory / Research
Working for developers, land/real-estate advisory firms (JLL, CBRE, Knight Frank, Anarock) and in-house development teams on feasibility, market research, land use, and project planning. A natural fit for a planning + real-estate lens. Specialisation tags: Urban, Housing, Infrastructure.
11 mapped employers
Explore path →World Bank / ADB Urban & Infrastructure Roles
Urban, transport, and infrastructure work at the multilateral banks — project preparation, technical assistance, and analytics, usually entered via consultant/STC contracts or (rarely, very competitively) the Young Professionals Program. Specialisation tags: Urban, Infrastructure, Transport.
9 mapped employers
Explore path →