Newly launched engagement practitioners network, Engage 2 Act will help identify the greatest challenges and knowledge gaps for community engagement practitioners in the infrastructure sector as a partner in the University of Melbourne’s Next Generation Engagement Project.
E2A President, Becky Hirst, said the group recognises the need to develop the practice of engagement through evidence-based research.
“Engage 2 Act is committed to making the case for community engagement. A critical aspect of this is changing the discussion that we are having as engagement professionals with project managers, design engineers and commercial managers – speaking the same language in order to demonstrate the value of good engagement to project outcomes.
“That means being progressive in terms of testing and evaluating new techniques, quantifying the value of ‘good’ engagement and at all times supporting the professional development of our members.
“The Next Generation Engagement Project has the potential to transform the practice of engagement and we’re proud to be part of it.
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 have been delayed, cancelled or completed and then mothballed over the past decade in Australia. This research aims to identify the key engagement challenges and gaps in delivering new infrastructure and to then address them through applied research with industry.”
“Partners such as the Engage 2 Act 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.”