Let's Talk Waterloo community engagement program wins an industry award

From 2016 to 2018, KJA was contracted to plan and deliver a community and stakeholder engagement program for the Waterloo public housing redevelopment – “Let’s Talk Waterloo”.

Our achievements were recognised with the program winning the prestigious Australasian Housing Institute award for Leading Community Engagement Practice.  The CEO and senior executives from Land and Housing lauded KJA for our “super contribution, dedication, innovation and resilience.”
 
The award was won for balancing community expectations and aspirations on an issues-rich project with a complex and passionate stakeholder community.
 
KJA planned and delivered over 20 community workshops working closely with local Aboriginal Elders, Chinese and Russian bilingual educators, state government and local NGOs to co-facilitate a range of workshops across and around the Waterloo Estate.
 
Feedback from the CEO of Land and Housing and the Minister at the time, expressed that our Visioning Engagement Report was one of the best reports they had read.
 
This program is a great testament to the work we do at KJA: how we add value, facilitate dialogue and contribute to improving communities while meeting government objectives.
 
If you would like to see more about the project, you can read our Visioning Report at www.communitiesplus.com.au/waterloo.

KJA on the winning team: Infrastructure Project of the Year Awards

WaterNSW’s $500 million 270km Murray to Broken Hill pipeline – the NSW Government’s largest investment in regional water security -  will provide the much-needed, long-term solution to secure the water supply for Broken Hill.

Water is a highly emotive and politically sensitive issue in far west NSW, generating a high level of stakeholder, community and media interest in the project.

KJA was engaged to develop and deliver a proactive and milestone-driven Stakeholder Management and Communication Strategy.

Through positive brand association, transparent decision making and best-practice stakeholder engagement, WaterNSW has been successfully positioned as a capable entity, distinct from ‘government’ and notable for its excellence in all facets of the delivery of critical customer infrastructure.

KJA’s team worked in the communities of Wentworth and Broken Hill providing a range of communication and consultation services to build relationships, raise project awareness and facilitate a strong community and delivery interface. Given the complexity of water issues in the far west and community concerns, tailored communications strategies were required at every stage to guide community and stakeholder engagement and consultation activities.

The Wentworth to Broken Hill Pipeline project team, which included three KJA consultants, was awarded the IAP2 Australasia Core Values Awards Infrastructure Project of the Year (Construction). These awards, created to encourage excellence and innovation, recognise outstanding projects and organisations that are at the forefront of public participation and community engagement.

KJA’s Kate Thomson was lucky enough to attend the event with WaterNSW. Congratulations also to Beattie Tow and Troy Gavin for their great work.

At the beginning of November our Managing Partner, Natalie Boyd, had the great pleasure of joining Penrith City Council at the NSW Planning Institute (PIA) Awards. The event was even more special when the project KJA worked on won not one, but two PIA awards.

The PIA citations (included below and available at https://www.planning.org.au/documents/item/10321 ) include the key role of community consultation in the project and promote the applicability of the process to other Council areas.

Best Planning Ideas - Small Project

AWARD: PENRITH CITY COUNCIL

PROJECT: OPEN SPACE REINVESTMENT PROJECT - ERSKINE PARK

This project was developed in response to the ongoing need of communities for increased recreation areas and the realisation that in older suburbs the recreation areas may not be in the configuration, or of a standard, to serve the community.

A key driver for this project was that while there was a demand for improving and expanding parks, there was not the available budget to make these improvements. The innovation in this project was the concept of redistribution of the recreation assets and working with the community to get their acceptance for this, improving critical areas of open space whilst divesting or changing non-core areas.

Commencing as a pilot in Erskine Park, the project has since then already led to seven areas being rezoned, and which will be sold to the market. By 2021 Council will have reinvested around $5.3 million to complete open space improvements across the suburb. Council piloted this project with the understanding that they might be able to apply a similar process to other suburbs in the local government area. The Judging team considered that the process was equally transferable to other Local Government Areas.

The Hard Won Victory

AWARD: PENRITH CITY COUNCIL

PROJECT: OPEN SPACE REINVESTMENT PROJECT - ERSKINE PARK

This award recognises projects that have applied innovative solutions and use of planning tools and techniques to address challenges, resulting in significant community benefits. The winning project is considered to be a hard won victory because the Council partnered with their Community to deliver what many would consider to be impossible. The achievement was reaching agreement between Council and the local Community that a series of small parks with lower amenity was of less community value than a highly functional place space. Remarkably, in consultation, it was agreed to rezone and sell existing green space to co-fund new open space projects with Council. Commencing as a pilot in Erskine Park, the project has already led to seven areas being rezoned and the parks will be sold to the market. How controversial is that! By 2021 Council will have reinvested around $5.3 million to complete open space improvements across the suburb. Council piloted this project with the intention to apply a similar process to other Council areas. The judging team considered that the process was equally transferable to other Council areas and the approach taken is critical when creating places for the community to enjoy.

The first award was for a consultation program….KJA designed and delivered to inform how council would fund open space improvements in Erskine Park. Council funded improvements in the suburb’s park areas from the sale of ‘left over’ land plots. The project was innovative in its engagement, design, and application.

Penrith City Council engaged KJA to design and deliver a community engagement program to support the rollout of Penrith Open Space Reinvestment Project in South Penrith and Jamisontown. The project was designed to explore opportunities to sell underutilised open spaces with little recreation value, to provide funding for improvements to other recreational spaces. Following a successful pilot project in Erksine Park, Council partnered with KJA to design and deliver engagement with the South Penrith and Jamisontown communities. Engagement activities included a letterbox drop, community drop-in sessions and a survey. A rigorous analysis identified key concerns in relation to the project generally and specific open space parcels, as well as opportunities for further consultation.

The second award….? KJA assisted Penrith City Council by designing and facilitating a workshop with key staff to develop a framework for engaging the community during the upcoming LEP Review. Through the workshop, KJA helped draw out the challenges and opportunities Council would face through the process, outlined a phased roadmap for engagement against indicative timeframes, and identified resourcing requirements and key points for the project narrative. This work informed a draft Engagement Strategy prepared by Council. KJA understood the dynamics of engaging with various stakeholders and were able to lead and direct conversations towards consensus and useable reporting outputs.

KJAs Managing Partner, Natalie Boyd reflects on KJAs first year as an ERM Group Company.

It’s been just over a year since we announced that KJA had been acquired by ERM, the global sustainability consulting firm. Since becoming KJA - an ERM Group Company we have found opportunities to work together and deliver new services to our clients. Delivering on our global remit, we have facilitated workshops from Sydney to Sweden and lots of places in between. We are enjoying getting to know each other and working hard to set ourselves up for shared success.

We announced our new management structure in October, with Kathy Jones in the role of Founder, Darryl Watkins as ERM Partner and myself as Managing Partner . Along with the Executive Leadership Team, we continue to lead and promote KJA’s ongoing focus on strategic engagement and communication.       

I’m excited about our future and the opportunities it brings. We will be co-locating with our ERM colleagues in Kent St, Sydney during February 2020. In addition to being closer to many of our clients, this will enable our synergies to be realised in everyday interactions and collaborations - KJA bring the agility of an entrepreneurial enterprise; ERM brings a focus on process but also global reach and experience. This depth and breadth will help to shape our thinking and point us to new areas where we can add real value to project outcomes. Like ERM, we have the maturity to be a safe pair of hands, whilst having a demonstrable commitment to innovation.

Our client focussed, innovative approach supports and is supported by ERMs focus on ‘shaping a sustainable future with the world's leading organisations’.

It is this approach that ensures the services and value we provide to our clients continues to create something unique and special just like KJA - an ERM Group Company.  

For the past year, the emerging Build to Rent (BtR) sector in Australia has received increased attention from policy makers and property correspondents. It was against that backdrop that KJA worked with the Committee for Sydney and Coronation Property to welcome Andy Leahy, a leading UK BtR specialist, to Sydney for a series of roundtable discussions with leading policy makers and sector stakeholders.

Andy Leahy is the Managing Director of Bespoke Property Consultants and advised the UK Government, led by former Prime Minister David Cameron, on policies that would help support the emergence of an institutionally-backed and professionally-run rental sector across the country. According to research by the British Property Federation, there are 142,999 BtR units either completed or planned in the UK currently, which constitutes a growth rate of around 600% since 2014. 

During his time in Sydney, Andy presented at a BtR roundtable event for the Committee for Sydney and met key policy makers in the NSW Government, including Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Rob Stokes MP and the Minister for Water, Property and Housing, Melinda Pavey MP. He also met private sector developers actively considering BtR opportunities and spoke to the Australian Financial Review and Fifth Estate.

In conversation with Fifth Estate Andy said: “Like London, Sydney is facing a challenge in meeting its housing need and BtR represents a new way of thinking about delivery to meet that need…It is good to see the emergence of BtR in Australia and I hope to play some small part in helping it grow and thrive in the coming years.”

KJA and others concerned with BtR are actively seeking to learn from some of the lessons emerging from the UK sector, particularly the tax and planning policy changes that were made between 2010 – 2017, that precipitated a 600% growth in the BtR sector. More growth in the UK sector is forecast as increasing numbers of people are priced out of home ownership.

The challenge of delivering high quality housing in light of growing demand is also an issue in Australia and one that is at the forefront of the minds of policy makers in NSW. A rental sector in Sydney that is punctuated by institutional investment, professional building management and maintenance services, as well as high design and construction quality, would help to meet that need. 

Andy Leahy’s visit has helped focus the mind and establish what needs to be done now to deliver.

As part of our commitment to be at the forefront of new engagement methods and tools, KJA recently invited Savannah de Savary, CEO of Built-ID to discuss the role that technology will play in shaping the future of community engagement.

In late 2018, London-based Savannah and her team launched the GiveMyView platform which has made a splash among local government policy-makers and property developers in the UK.

GiveMyView is a digital platform designed to increase engagement with groups that sit outside of the ‘vocal minority’ that tend to be over-represented in public consultation exercises.

With a well-designed interface, geofencing and a gamification element that allows residents to allocate funds for local charities by participating in a consultation program, the platform has generated significant levels of engagement from young people and hard-to-reach groups in the community.

KJA was pleased to introduce GiveMyView and Savannah to a number of clients and colleagues specialising in community engagement in New South Wales and Victoria, as well as peak bodies such as the Committee for Sydney. During her time in Australia, Savannah also gave an interview with Emma de Jager from the Fifth Estate about the gamification about the community engagement process.

Here is what KJA concluded from the meetings:

1.     Developers in the UK are increasingly looking to use digital tools to engage with communities during the consultation programs associated with Development Applications. In the Australian context, developer uptake of these tools could result in better project outcomes at every level.  

2.     While the gamut of more traditional ‘human touch’ engagement methods – information sessions, workshops, info lines, door-knocking – will continue to be essential to engagement programs, excellent digital platforms will become an important component, particularly for reaching those who historically do not get involved.

3.     Practitioners are hungry for ways to reach greater numbers of and more varied groups of stakeholders, generally in the belief that feedback should be more representative of affected communities, and less polarised. GiveMyView has a short but impressive track record in achieving this.

The KJA team consistently looks to partner with innovators in the market that can help us bring new approaches to help our clients achieve their objectives. Watch this space over the coming months!

Less than 30% of Aussies have at least some trust in federal parliament and business groups. So how can communities become empowered to better govern themselves and act on issues they care about?

That’s the challenge KJA’s Innovation Hub has given to four students from the University of Technology Sydney as part of the Faculty for Trans-disciplinary Innovation’s Industry Innovation Projects program.

The student team will be in the office on Tue 9 April so come and say hi! I’ll be supporting them through the process, connecting them with KJA staff and other stakeholders as they make sense of the challenge and prototype solutions.

In the meantime, check out a quick video from each member on who they are and why they took up KJA’s challenge:

·         Meet Nic

·         Meet Marissa

·         Meet Nusardel

·         Meet Sharon

Property ownership is a large part of the Australian dream, both as a home and as an investment. When a property owner is notified that their property is to be acquired there is understandably a lot of stress and sometimes grief. Rumbi Mabambe shares some interesting details of how she helps property owners cope, in her role as a Personal Manager.