The Slims Consulting team has unrivalled experience in effective and high quality evaluation of projects, programmes and policies.

Seeing effective evidence of success is becoming a critical way of justifying the use of scarce resources in any project.

Independent, robust analysis and evaluation of the impact of policies and projects helps:

• inform future policy decisions
• aid in the process of sharing best practise
• identify which project and policy intervention has the greatest impact
• assess the effectiveness, and continuing relevance, of a policy or project against its original aims and objectives.

Evaluation of the Town Centre Regeneration Fund

Slims Consulting is part of the consortium working on the evaluation of the £60m Town Centre Regeneration Fund (TCRC) for the Scottish Government. The research has two key aims. To assess the scope and nature of the outputs and longer term outcomes achieved from town centre regeneration fund investments and to identify what factors contribute most to achieving success. Secondly the project draws on existing data and evidence to identify any gaps in in the TCRC performance and how these can be effectively filled.

Evaluation of KIT-OUT

The KIT-OUT project was designed to encourage greater cooperation and closer working between academics at Glasgow Caledonian University and businesses in the tourism sector. It has a particular focus on engaging businesses that have not been involved with the higher education sector before and who don’t have experience of investing in research and development. The initial geographical focus of the project was on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park area, but this was rolled out across the whole of the West of Scotland. Our evaluation process assessed the performance of the project to date and highlighted key learning points for similar projects in the future.

Evaluation of the Scottish Environmental Technology Network

Slims Consulting recently evaluated the Scottish Environmental Technology Network (SETN). The SETN aims to improve the competitiveness of Scottish SMEs working in the Environmental Goods & Services (EGS) sector. It provides advice and support to firms operating in the sector by:

• scoping ideas
• preparing proposals,
• finding partners and funding,
• moving on to laboratory/field trials
• commercialisation.

It also hosts events offering SMEs and academics the opportunity to meet and share information. The evaluation involved a series of interviews with supported businesses and relevant stakeholders and an online business survey.

Evaluation of 2kt

Slims Consulting evaluated the 2kt project run by Edinburgh Napier and Queen Margaret Universities. The project is designed to promote collaboration between the academic community and the SME business base. An interim evaluation reviewed the progress of the project in engaging with businesses and made a number of recommendations on how its operation could be improved. The final evaluation considered the overall progress of 2kt towards its performance targets and assessed the overall economic impact of the project. The findings for this were used to support the project’s application for follow-on funding from the Scottish Government.

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