Sometimes you think you ask a simple question and you’re wrong. In January, as part of the Blandin Broadband Initiative, Bill Coleman and Eric Lampland  gave a presentation on RFPs and Feasibility Studies. (Their presentation is online.) It was very well received so I thought it might be interesting to get together a “top 10 tips for feasibility studies” type thing for the blog.

There are a number of very smart people on the Blandin Broadband Strategy Board – so I asked some of them for help.

Mike O’Connor emphasized the need to define a project and offers a Questionnaire that will help to do that. Answering the questions will take time but will save time and money in the long run. One question on the questionnaire is – “what’s your preferred problem-solving approach”, which is another way of saying that it’s very important to have a methodology in mind when starting a project.

Mike also offers an article by PacketFront (Planning Is the Key to Success for Community Fiber Projects by PacketFront) that offers a great example of a high-level overview of a methodology.

A controversy arose regarding the definition of a feasibility study. The temptation is to call everything a feasibility study. As Eric Lampland put it – if you’ve got support, know what you’re trying to do and want to know if it’s doable, that’s feasibility. However, if what you’re doing is exploration, education, codifying data, establishing objectives and initially lining up support — that’s not a feasibility study.

Eric offers the feasibility elements from RUS Bulletin 1738 , which is their application guide. These elements are required for a RUS loan and would be required for most bonding authorities, at a minimum and would be a good start.

So there you go – not a top ten but some good tools and a little perspective on feasibility.