Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

At CAG Consultants, we are skilled at evaluating projects and policies of all sizes and complexities. 

Project And Policy Evaluation

We are leaders in policy and programme evaluation design and delivery. We can help you understand how your projects, programmes and policies are performing and what impacts they are having.

We can offer tailored approaches to fit the type and scale of your initiative, from community-based projects to complex Government policies.  

For large, complex programmes, we are expert in the application of theory-based approaches to evaluation and have a track record of effectively managing complex policy and programme evaluations incorporating multiple strands of qualitative and quantitative research and multiple project partners.

For smaller projects, we take a proportionate approach, helping you to develop a Theory of Change and/or Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework that will meet your needs, and helping you integrate evidence gathering and learning activities into project implementation. 

Our aim is to support a culture of evidence-based decision-making across our client base.

Our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) services can help you by:

  • Engaging closely with you and your team to define your MEL needs
  • Helping you to define what success means for you (e.g. by working with you to develop a Theory of Change)
  • Helping you work out how to measure/assess success  (e.g. by developing a MEL framework)
  • Supporting appropriate ways of gathering MEL evidence that fit your budget and needs
  • Providing an independent assessment of your project, policy or programme process and/or impacts, where needed
  • Providing training and support in MEL methods 

CAG is a member of the UK Evaluation Society and our team includes qualified social researchers that are members of the Social Research Association.

We provide evaluation services for many different organisations, including government departments, regional government, local authorities, private sector organisations, charities, community action groups and other bodies.  We undertake evaluations across many different sectors including: energy, climate change, regeneration, economic development, the natural environment, land use planning, flood risk management, community cohesion, sustainability, transport, waste , recycling and behaviour change.

Our evaluation expertise includes:

  • Developing Theories of Change and MEL frameworks
  • Developing indicator sets, and methods for collection of qualitative and quantitative evidence
  • Theory-based evaluation design and delivery
  • Process evaluations
  • Impact and economic evaluations
  • Realist evaluation
  • Social research and literature review expertise
  • Management and synthesis of findings from mixed-methods evaluations
  • Independent peer review of external evaluations
  • Ad hoc evaluation support, training and advice
  • Employing a wide range of evaluation approaches and techniques, including developmental evaluation (see next section), participatory analysis, contribution analysis, process tracing (including Bayesian updating) and Qualitative Comparative Analysis

 

Please see our project and policy evaluation case studies:

Evaluation of Second Climate Change Agreements scheme

Evaluation of the Impact of PCAN-supported Climate Commissions

Impact Evaluation of the GLA’s London Regeneration Fund

Evaluation of the Transitional Arrangements for Demand Side Response; Evaluation

SUPPORTING LEARNING APPROACHES 

We can offer flexible approaches to evaluation that help you to learn and improve as you go. ‘Developmental evaluation’ approaches, as developed by Michael Quinn-Patton, recognise that innovative projects may evolve as you work out what works well and what doesn’t. Learning approaches focus on generating useful evidence in real time, using a learning cycle that allows your team to define current learning priorities, gather and analyse evidence and then adjust their activities in response to findings.

Taking a ‘learning’ approach can help your initiative to evolve and improve over time, and can also generate outputs to help share learning with others, extending your impact further.

In learning-based work, our skilled evaluators and learning experts work in partnership with your team, actively collaborating with you to identify priorities, draw out and ‘package’ emerging learning. If needed, our learning support experts can become an embedded part of your team, rather than operating at arms length.  

The learning services that we offer include: 

  • Supporting the design and implementation of learning services and developmental evaluations
  • Designing and implementing mechanisms for regular identification and sharing of learning
  • Convening and facilitating participative learning events (e.g. online or face to face workshops)
  • Identifying learning needs within different audiences, and developing guidance materials or training sessions to meet these needs
  • Capturing and sharing learning through case studies, policy notes, videos and blogs
  • Disseminating learning to target audiences, via publications, social media and events
  • Please see our case study on Learning: Managing Flood Risk in the Ouse Marshes Using Sluice Gates.