Valuing the assets economies are built on

Ports, power networks, processing plants, rolling stock, public works: the assets economies are physically built on are among the hardest to value by observation. They are long-lived, often highly specialised, frequently bound up with the land they occupy, and they rarely change hands in markets that produce usable price evidence. Valuing them is less about reading a market and more about constructing a defensible answer where the market is quiet — exactly the territory where robust valuation governance matters most.

One framework, even for the least liquid assets

The International Valuation Standards address this asset class through IVS 300 Plant, Equipment and Infrastructure, one of the Asset Standards that sit beneath the General Standards on scope of work, bases of value, approaches, data and inputs, models, and documentation and reporting. The point of that architecture is consistency of discipline rather than uniformity of method: a turbine hall and a portfolio of listed shares demand very different techniques, but the same structural questions must be answered and recorded for both.

Questions every engagement must settle

Because observable evidence is scarce, plant, equipment and infrastructure valuations stand or fall on how clearly the foundational questions are resolved.

Infrastructure and the public interest

Infrastructure valuation is rarely a purely private matter: the assets involved underpin services, balance sheets and policy decisions. International bodies have recognised the role of common standards here. The UNECE’s Policy Framework for Sustainable Real Estate Markets (2019) supports, in Principle 10, property valuation based on transparent asset appraisal criteria in line with international standards, citing IVS as an example. And where infrastructure crosses land held under informal or unregistered tenure — a common reality in many economies — UN-Habitat’s practice manual on the valuation of unregistered land (2021) is designed for use in combination with the IVSC’s international valuation standards. Both reflect the same logic: when valuations support public decisions, transparency of method is part of the public interest.

A discipline that travels

Plant and infrastructure projects are routinely financed, insured and owned across borders, and the valuations behind them are read accordingly. IVS is used as a framework in more than 100 countries, with IVSC member organisations operating across 137, according to the IVSC’s global adoption overview. For the practitioner, that reach has a practical meaning: a valuation of a specialised asset, prepared under IVS 300 with its basis, approach and data trail clearly documented, can withstand examination by a lender in one jurisdiction and an auditor in another. For assets that cannot speak for themselves through market prices, that documented discipline is what does the talking.