Benefits of Scenario Planning

Facet's scenario planning helps community decision makers and planners fully understand the opportunities and challenges facing them, and to help develop a robust, feasible plan. All the important relationships are considered, so the full benefits, costs and side effects of each alternate future are shown in the reports generated by the models.

This approach has many benefits:

• It allows a creative look at possibilities that would be discarded in a paper-based planning process. With a model, creating and evaluating a new scenario takes minutes instead of weeks of effort.
• It is custom-built to show the community's specific issues, opportunities, risks and alternatives. Every community is unique, with its own resources, opportunities, and constraints. We can't solve your unique problems but we can model your alternatives so that your choices are clear and defensible.
• Planners and decision makers get "big picture" understanding of the risks facing them, which allows them to develop contingency plans with confidence knowing all the details have been included.
• Paper plans are out-of-date as soon as they are printed. A Scenario Model is a "living document". Every external event or step in the implementation process can be added to the Scenario Model so it always shows the current status of the Community and its plans.
• A Scenario Model becomes a key implementation tool. It can be used to evaluate the potential impacts of individual projects to see how well they meet the community's goals. It also becomes an excellent tool for reporting progress against the Comprehensive Plan's milestones.