Overview
The Department of Public Works aims to proactively and continuously engage with the public during all phases of its projects. Community engagement, or pubic involvement, seeks representation from the full impacted community, considers the public’s comments and feedback, and incorporates, where possible, this feedback into its projects, programs and plans.
Community engagement varies in its possible processes from providing information, to understanding concerns, to obtaining feedback and to identifying preferred solutions.
The Complete Streets Handbook outlines the opportunities for community engagement over the course of a project and necessitates the development of a community engagement plan. The amount of community engagement needed for a project to be successful will be dependent on its scope, impacts and location.
Process
Below is the typical cadence of community engagement for a DPW project, though smaller safety and maintenance projects may have a scaled-down approach in correlation with their scope, impacts and location.
Step 3 - Community Engagement Plan
In the project initation phase, a community engagement plan is developed to outline the meetings and activities that will be held across the project to keep the public informed, respond to feedback and execute a project that is responsive the community's needs and involves necessary parties.
Step 4 - Community Engagement #1 - Project Introduction, Existing Conditions, and Goals
The first public meeting introduces the project purpose, confirms the project need with the community, refine the scope and define goals that will later be used to shape alternatives and explain trade-offs.
Step 9 - Community Engagement #2 - Alternatives Presentation
At the second public meeting, DPW will present the design alternatives to get feedback and understand which alternatives meet project goals from the community's perspective. The meeting will also give the project team the opportunity to collect the information necessary to select a preferred alternative to advance to the design phase.
Step 11 - Construction Engagement Planning
By this phase in the project, DPW should have most of the information necessary to determine the approximate construction schedule as well as the anticipated impacts to the right-of-way and adjacent properties. This step will also identify the construction project team that will oversee the project through completion.
Step 12 - Community Engagement #3 - Preferred Alternative
At the final public meeting, the preferred design alternative is presented to the community to confirm that it meets the key project goals. This meeting also provides an opportunity for the project team to communicate and solicit feedback on the proposed construction schedule and impacts with stakeholders.
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