Economic impact assessments (EIA) provide essential information related to the impact of a project, program, or policy on the economy, employment and other key aspects of community well-being in a specific region. The results from EIA can help decision-makers make informed choices about major investments. The team at Deetken Insight has completed over a dozen complex EIAs in recent years, primarily for BC’s public sector. For example, we have undertaken five economic impact assessments of major renewable energy infrastructure projects and regulatory initiatives for a major electric utility. We completed numerous EIAs for a provincial government related to resource development, focused primarily on the economic impact of large capital investments at the provincial, regional and community level. These projects ranged from $40 Million to $75 Billion in proposed capital and operational and maintenance expenditures.
Deetken also has extensive experience creating sector-level economic baselines. Most recently, we were engaged by a provincial government to build economic profiles for a series of industries. In addition, Deetken worked with Creative BC to measure the economic contribution of the creative industries in BC (click here for more detail). Our sector baselining methodology produces a range of estimates by region and at the provincial level, including GDP, jobs, hours, exports, median business size, and indirect and induced economic impacts.
In our experience, the key to an insightful EIA is a comprehensive understanding of the economic dynamics of the industry or policy in question. For example, the relative importance of capital versus operating costs, the source of economic input (domestic or imported) the length of a capital investment (e.g. 5 vs. 40 years), the quantity of labour, and the type of and regional distribution of labour are all key considerations to ensure that the material factors are well accounted for in economic modeling.
Our EIA work is guided by four core values:
- Value: Given our experience with EIAs, our project team can hit the ground running, delivering value immediately, given our familiarity with a range of reliable datasets and our ability to leverage our pre-configured EIA models.
- Collaboration and Transparency: Our proprietary models are built to best practice, combining client-proprietary data with data from trusted sources including Statistics Canada and BC Stats.
- Living Solutions: Our models are sound and flexible. They are easily updated and expanded to respond to a continuously evolving economic landscape, creating foundations that deliver immediately with an intent to continue doing so, well into the future.
- Independence and Agility: We are a boutique firm focused on high quality projects and long-term strategic relationships that push the edge of research and data science in partnerships that build and innovate together. We are focused on quality delivery for each mandate, while simultaneously uncovering new value potential at every step of a project.
