Visualisation of construction costs and techniques of employment-intensive road construction in developing areas

Abstract

Employment generation in the construction of economically efficient infrastructure can contribute to the alleviation of poverty. Practical Choice of Technique Analysis (COTA-P) is a tool that enables decision makers to estimate the financial and socio-economic costs involved in a construction. COTA-P looks at the construction from an employment-intensive perspective, with the underlying idea to substitute as much labour for machines as is feasible, and to promote the use of local labour in underdeveloped and poor areas. COTA-P consists of a technical screening phase, a financial and socio-economical screening phase, and thirdly the monitoring and evaluation phase. Each phase analyses the possibility of the enhanced use of labour. COTA-P is programmed in a Windows 32-bit environment, and gives the user maximum user friendliness, while allowing for extensive manipulation of the core variables and parameters, thus enabling the user to analyse various scenarios in a short time.