ICE Strategy Session: The value of community engagement on infrastructure projects

Overview

Civil engineers make an essential contribution to society by designing and shaping the natural and built environment. It is often said that people and the community are at the heart of what the profession does, with consulting firms/contractors sharing their success stories of adopting approaches which involve the public in decision making to ensure local benefit as far as possible.

However, is this always the case? To what extent are the public truly engaged in the process? Are cost and client expectations preventing us or hampering efforts to actually work with the community to build and maintain infrastructure assets which actually benefit and improves their lives.

Community engagement is important and can lead to improved outcomes on infrastructure projects. It increases acceptance of decisions and community commitment to outcomes as local knowledge from diverse groups shapes and creates inclusive, effective solutions.

Engineers have historically been criticised for designing infrastructure without successfully engaging the community. Whereas the follow-on effect of active participation is increased trust in organisations and governance to make better public decisions.

This event aims to demonstrate good practice principles for community engagement, identifying specific examples of good practice where infrastructure professionals have worked with the public on infrastructure projects to achieve the optimum solution for the community.

In this seminar, panellists will discuss

• The changing needs of the community. Anusha Shah
• The Fishlake floods and the value of working with the community. Peter Trimingham
• Sustainable infrastructure development - why is engagement important? Monika Szczyrba
• Good practice principles for community engagement on infrastructure projects. Prof. Sarah Bell