Everybody involved in the management of demining programmes will do cost-benefit analyses. In most cases, the aim is to optimise use of resources, where “optimisation” in terms of resource use generally also means “minimisation” in terms of cost.

The challenge is to do cost-minimisation without compromising essential requirements, such as productivity, safety, and quality. Sometimes these objectives seem incompatible. Time and Motion (T&M) studies offer a mechanism for doing quantitative analyses of operational demining programmes.