Our Approach:

Social Atlas renewed the approach to engagement on the project, setting the revised engagement strategy, developing issue-based action plans and providing expert regionally-based consultants to support and deepen engagement practices. This included standing-up new Place Manager and Community Place Manager roles to better reach remote communities along the transmission line.

Comprehensive stakeholder mapping and analysis was carried out to ensure affected project stakeholders were appropriately considered during project development and the team worked proactively with specialists, planners, and valuers, distilling technical information into plain language to support impacted landowners to make informed decisions. Social Atlas also coordinated a review of landowner communications collateral, ensuring an audience-first approach was applied. 

In addition to strengthening communication with impacted landowners, Social Atlas consultants focused on building effective internal and external stakeholder relationships, and sensitive and/or hard-to-reach stakeholder groups were also identified and engaged with. These included community action groups, representative and advocacy bodies, and Local Aboriginal Land Councils. The team advocated on behalf of sensitive receivers and impacted landowners and continuously provided advice back to project teams about community interests, impacts and emerging contentious issues. This approach supported greater information flow between community and planners, and contributed to the route refinement and land acquisition process. An Opportunities Register was also created to identify potential benefits for the community, be that through local business contracts, community partnership grants or shared projects.

 In addition to embedded resources, Social Atlas has delivered stand-alone projects, such as a Social Impact Assessment consultation, further supporting effective engagement practice.