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Building bridges to successful community engagement
WATER FOCUS
The water crisis in Cape Town is a stark reminder of things to come for many communities across the world as we struggle with changes in rainfall patterns, more severe storms and also increased cost in maintaining and operating complex water infrastructure. And for regional and remote service providers lacking both financial and human resources, the challenges can be even more daunting. Research produced by the Queensland Water Directorate (qldwater) and funded through the Queensland Water Regional Alliances Program (QWRAP), highlighted the need for better stakeholder engagement programs to address these challenges in order to build stronger, more resilient communities. Bridging the gaps According to qldwater Communications Manager Desiré Gralton, the barriers to successful engagement in regional communities centre around limited skills and resources, with technical and/or operations staff often expected to do community engagement as well. “We also found a lack of communication between different departments within Councils and, where Councils do employ communications and media teams,
they often lack an understanding of the challenges faced by operators, technical staff and managers.” To help bridge the gap between Council departments, and between local and state governments, qldwater piloted a Community Engagement in Action Workshop with Southern Downs Regional Council, ultimately aiming to develop a roadmap towards effective community engagement with a specific focus on water demand management. Why water demand management? By influencing residents to decrease their water usage,
Engineering for Public Works | June 2018
Councils can effectively counteract the need for more costly water infrastructure and delay or remove the need to enter into deeper water restrictions that impact the whole community. Delayed infrastructure spending offers a strong business case to build waterwise communities, and good stakeholder engagement can contribute significantly to successful project outcomes whilst enhancing the service level provided to the community. Ms Gralton said Water Demand Management programs needed to be carefully designed to be responsive to the broad range of attitudes within all communities,
