Project: COVID-19 Surge Centre - Communications Support
Supporting rapid project approvals for frontline health services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Client: ACT Government: Major Projects Canberra
Project Dates: May 2020
Services Delivered:
Statutory consultation to support planning approvals
Ministerial and stakeholder briefings
Key messaging & communications collateral development
Project Background:
The COVID-19 Surge Centre is a temporary facility that was located on the Garran Oval, in Woden, close to the Canberra Hospital. Announced in April 2020, and opened the following month, the Surge Centre was designed as part of the ACT’s COVID-19 response plan, helping to boost capacity and enhance the region's ability to respond to the pandemic. The Centre was planned only to become operational as a respiratory intensive care unit if there was a surge in COVID-19 infections in the ACT, providing integrated operations with those of the Canberra Hospital to ensure patients who had, or were suspected of having, COVID-19 could receive appropriate care according to the severity of their illness.
The Challenge:
Canberra’s COVID-19 Surge Centre was required to be built within an unprecedented timeframe of 36 days, on the oval located next to the Canberra Hospital. Its announcement came at a time of great uncertainty, when community emotions were heightened and there was still a significant lack of understanding about the transmission and effects of the COVID-19 virus. The Centre’s position near the Garran Primary School and on Woden’s town cricket ground added to the project’s sensitivities. Additional complexities stemmed from a significant proportion of the project's stakeholders being heavily focused on the general COVID-19 response and having limited time to provide input, as well as a government mandated shutdown on communication campaigns to help prioritise COVID-19 information, which all contributed to a challenging project environment.
Our Approach:
Engagement for this project needed to be highly focused, given the condensed timeframe to deliver, and speed to market in terms of accessing key stakeholder groups was essential. Through previous work carried out for the Canberra Hospital Expansion project, Social Atlas was able to utilise existing stakeholder and community groups to inform models of care discussions and effectively disseminate key project information and answer any questions raised with immediacy. Working closely with Canberra Hospital and the Garran Primary School was also a priority to ensure appropriate messaging was released to address any concerns for parents and staff.
Prior to construction starting on the Surge Centre, Social Atlas moved quickly to ensure required statutory notification processes were adhered to. By leveraging existing relationships with local suppliers, letter drops were completed within constrained timeframes ensuring the local community were appropriately notified about the project and the anticipated construction impacts, including out of hours works, as well as operations and the long-term remediation plans for the oval.
The “black-out” on government campaigns with the objective of ensuring the community wasn’t flooded with confused or conflicting messages required close coordination with the ACT Government Public Information Centre (PICC) to ensure that messaging for the Surge Centre was fed into broader COVID-19 communications. This stretched from project announcement to progress updates during construction, however was particularly important in the lead up to the Centre becoming operational when the community needed to be informed about how and when they should access and use the Centre’s services. In addition to traditional and digital communication tactics, the site's banner mesh was used to reinforce wayfinding and community messaging.
By working closely with Major Projects Canberra, Canberra Hospital Services and ACT Health, as well as relevant ministerial offices, our team was able to ensure that communication about the Centre, its function, and operational information was released in a timely, coordinated and accurate way, supporting the community and key stakeholder groups from planning to delivery and into operations.
Project Outcomes:
The project was successfully delivered within its required timeframe, supporting the wider Canberra community, and playing an important role in the ACT’s pandemic response.
Key stakeholders were appropriately informed, and as a result of the approach taken the local community’s health concerns about risk of transmission from the site were able to be addressed proactively.
Despite constraints, awareness for the project was high and statutory notification processes were met. Furthermore, the integration of messaging with the PICC enabled a focused and effective communication campaign to support the Surge Centre opening just 36 days after the project was announced.
