Community engagement critical in Australia's infrastructure race

Engagement at this stage doesn’t need to be wide-scale, demographically representative engagement driven by quantitative research. To be pragmatic, the focus of engagement in the early phase of projects should be on small representative samples of communities that can help project teams gain additional insight into stakeholder values, drivers and motivations.

Investing in this kind of upfront engagement can help inform and smooth the way for projects over the long term. It allows project teams to be responsive to the motivations of government decision-makers and expedite funding decisions without skipping crucial community and stakeholder engagement that can hurt initiatives down the track.

Our enforced working from home has morphed our geographic definition of ‘local’. The fundamental relevance of New Urbanism’s walkable local neighbourhood has been re-emphasised, as has Melbourne and Sydney’s respective 20-minute and 30-minute city ideals. More than ever communities want to be involved in the update, rethink or reinvention of places that matter to them.

For example, transport-oriented development initiatives—those that emphasise place-making and seek to deliver better connectivity, liveability and employment outcomes by strategically concentrating development around heavy rail transport corridors—has been the key city-shaping, catalytic infrastructure delivery model in our major cities for the past decade.

But as the global pandemic has given communities the opportunity to pause and assess what really matters in life, it’s likely that many people will refine or even re-define their take on value and benefit in terms of how they assess what they and their community gains from infrastructure investments.

This means that for robust project planning and to ensure shared understanding and community acceptance, projects proponents need to recalibrate their definitions of value and benefit to ensure community acceptance of projects that are being fast-tracked to delivery.

At RPS, we work with clients to fit a pragmatic program of engagement into the program for business case development and project planning. By asking the right questions early, we wrap findings into options development, assessment and evaluation.

We have experience facilitating guided discussion groups to explore and understand community aspirations, stakeholder opportunities for shared or joint-use facilities opportunities and neighbourhood values.

Through vision and investment logic mapping workshops we test stakeholder acceptance of the ‘problem’ and bring a community lens to benefits, options and asset interventions.

The result is better projects that respond to local needs and are less likely a hit the brick wall of community opposition.  

Just because governments are mandating fast-tracked infrastructure to revive the economy, that does not mean we need to leave meaningful engagement on the cutting room floor. Understanding and advocating for impacted stakeholders and communities during project formation will flush out potential showstoppers, manage project risk and ultimately deliver better outcomes for government, stakeholders and the communities and places we are investing in.