Stakeholder consultation
Updated planning legislation and raised expectations have elevated the importance of undertaking best practice stakeholder engagement and public consultation.
Flawed or inadequate stakeholder engagement can lead to expensive delays and reputational damage. Strong, effective relationships with stakeholders can build support and understanding for proposals, while reducing delivery risks.
Recognising early on your need to engage stakeholders appropriately and effectively can prevent costly challenges later. Well managed stakeholder engagement programmes can be the difference between project failure and success.
We apply our broad experience to collaborate with you in developing and delivering bespoke stakeholder engagement strategies that are tailored to the needs of each individual project.
What can we do for you?
Our stakeholder engagement and consultation services deliver positive outcomes for infrastructure projects – including reduced delays and cost overruns, better designed projects with beneficial outcomes for communities, and increased stakeholder and community support – as well as enhancing your reputation.
Understand and respond to your stakeholder needs
Every development proposal has unique challenges and stakeholder issues to address. We work closely with you to identify and understand these issues and to ensure a development proposal takes account of local views, hopes and concerns. To ensure stakeholders can express their views, we develop and manage an engagement programme – using the appropriate methods, at the appropriate time, to engage with different stakeholders.
We meet your stakeholders at set focus or working group meetings, and we organise public consultations and information events. We liaise with political, community and business leaders, engage with local media and provide project information.
We have extensive experience in developing effective methodologies for hard-to-reach stakeholder groups, like older people and youth.
Deploy a robust method for successful outcomes
We take a methodical approach to delivering successful engagement for your project.
- Stage 1: Identify and prioritise – We undertake thorough stakeholder and community identification and prioritisation exercises during inception on all project phases. To successfully map your stakeholders, we hold an initial workshop, undertake identification and mapping, complete a prioritisation exercise and verify stakeholder mapping with you.
- Stage 2: Communicate – This includes creating project messaging and FAQs (frequently asked questions) tailored for different stakeholder audiences.
- Stage 3: Engage and consult – We use a hybrid conventional and digital approach to engagement and consultation, catering for all audiences. Our digital approach includes interactive mapping, videos, flythroughs and virtual reality, bringing proposals to life. We ensure our approach is accessible, including bilingual, braille, large print and audio descriptions.
- Stage 4: Analyse and report – Feedback is logged and managed through a stakeholder engagement tracker. Following consultation periods, we produce compliant consultation reports to summarise stakeholder feedback. Our reports explain how this feedback is considered in the design; provide responses to issues raised; detail the methods used for compliant stakeholder engagement and consultation; outline next steps for scheme development through optioneering and construction; and describe how we will continue to communicate with stakeholders about schemes to capitalise on opportunities and mitigate risks and constraints.
Engaging stakeholders for better project outcomes
Our stakeholder engagement team has a wide range of experience and skills that are kept current through our membership of the Consultation Institute and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, working with clients and projects spanning buildings, defence and security, energy, transport and water. We can support you in:
Our experience
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A46 Newark bypass, Nottingham, UKFor this nationally significant infrastructure project, requiring a development consent order, we worked with National Highways to undertake stakeholder engagement in support of the plans. Despite a challenging timeline, beginning six months after the preferred route announcement, we delivered a focused campaign that built positive relationships, understood views, discussed the project's options and solutions, and ultimately reduced risk of delay to the project.
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Inland border facility, Sevington, UKWorking with an integrated project team, including the Department for Transport, we supported the design and development of an inland border facility (IBF) in Sevington, near Ashford, Kent, including its stakeholder engagement and consultation. For this special development order project, we designed and delivered the specialist and tailored stakeholder engagement required, including working through intense external scrutiny of the project.
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Olean North Union Street, New York, USAThe city of Olean set out to convert the four-lane car-oriented commercial district of North Union Street to a two-lane ‘complete street’ that would improve mobility and accessibility for all users, increase economic vitality, provide a welcoming destination for commerce, and improve the environment with innovative stormwater treatment. We presented design concepts at a series of community ‘summits’.
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Ports of Jersey harbour masterplan, UKIn Jersey, we supported and advised the development of the Ports of Jersey harbour masterplan through stakeholder management and public engagement. The masterplan will update and improve this critical infrastructure to better meet the needs of passengers, freight and vessels.
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West Yorkshire mass transit, UKWe’re working with West Yorkshire Combined Authority Mass Transit to deliver stakeholder engagement and consultation for its mass transit scheme, a transformational investment for the region. As lead consultant, we’re responsible for providing an engagement and communication strategy to identify, pre-empt and respond to opportunities, issues and constraints.
People and Planet
People and Planet demonstrates and quantifies social and environmental outcomes. It combines publicly available data with project data to assess social and environmental factors alongside project priorities. Risks and opportunities are displayed on maps and dashboards, empowering decisions that create long-term benefits for people and the planet.
