The Melbourne School of Government has partnered with Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA) on the Next Generation Engagement Project.
Brendan Lyon, Chief Executive of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia said that infrastructure projects live or die based on the momentum behind them from policymakers, the private sector, and the community.
“It’s hard to fix what you cannot measure, so I hope this research identifies where there is room for improvement on project engagement and outcomes,” Mr Lyon said.
Social license expert, Dr Sara Bice, is leading the project on behalf of the Melbourne School of Government.
“Almost $20 billion in largely taxpayer-funded projects that were the subject of community opposition have been delayed, cancelled or completed and then mothballed over the past decade in Australia . This research aims to identify the key engagement challenges gaps in delivering new infrastructure and to then address them through applied research with industry.”
“Partners such as IPA will play a vital role in helping us to understand the problem. The experiences of their members at the coal face of major projects will allow us to create a clear picture of the core social challenges facing Australia’s infrastructure delivery,” Dr Bice said.
Project Director, Kirsty O’Connell joins Dr Bice in delivering the project.
“Investors, governments and infrastructure professionals acknowledge that social risk and community opposition are making projects slower and more expensive but as practitioners we don’t yet have the hard data to allow us to calculate these costs,” Ms O’Connell said.
“A solid evidence base will underpin the business case for better practices and ultimately deliver better outcomes for communities and proponents. The Next Generation Engagement Project is the first step in developing that sound evidence base.”
Over the coming six months the University of Melbourne and its partners will conduct the largest national consultation on engagement to date. This will include:
- a national survey on engagement and social license challenges for Australia’s infrastructure sector
- workshops in each capital city with leading Australian practitioners and international infrastructure experts
- a gap analysis that details the most critical knowledge gaps for the community engagement profession
- testing the gap analysis with infrastructure professionals across Australia.
Dr Bice said, “Through this work we aim to identify the biggest roadblocks around engagement, social risk management and social license for infrastructure delivery together with an analysis of emerging trends and challenges.”
“Our aim is to get this information onto the desk of key decision makers in Australia’s infrastructure sector to really inform the discussion. Our intention is that this work will seed longer-term research partnerships that will help industry to make meaningful progress on these issues.”