Return on Investment

The Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia (ISCA) has been supporting the infrastructure industry drive best practice through the Infrastructure Sustainability Rating Scheme (IS Rating Scheme) since 2012. In this time, the Scheme has actively contributed to capacity building and transparently measuring the social, environmental, governance and cultural outcomes delivered by more than $160 billion of infrastructure projects currently under rating. To help quantify the future benefit the Scheme can deliver, ISCA engaged RPS to assess the net benefits that an IS Rating provides to our society. The study used a cost benefit analysis (CBA) or ‘welfare economics’ framework supported by stakeholder engagement. A CBA framework assesses the costs and benefits to all impacted parties within Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand including not only the project proponents but also the environment, community members and government. Targeted stakeholder engagement added to the robustness and richness of the findings because, consistent with the principles of Social Return on Investment (SROI), engagement revealed how stakeholders that are actually implementing the Scheme are affected.