Yesterday, for the first time in three years, tCI headed down to London to take part in the Consultation and Stakeholder Engagement for Infrastructure conference organised by the Waterfront Conference Company. After my digital stint last year in the chair, I was invited back to chair the in-person event at the offices of the law firm Burges Salmon (with the lovely view pictured above), joined by Institute Associate Damian Greenfield, the first speaker.

Over the course of the day, we had contributions from around the sector and speakers from major national infrastructure bodies, consultancies and professional services providers and developers, all of whom spoke of the challenges and opportunities current in infrastructure, many of which are either shared across all aspects of consultation and engagement, or are transferable across them. The context of the conference was of course a new government, which has said much about the importance of speeding up major growth-related projects, sometimes intimating that this might intersect with consultation and engagement obligations.

What was immediately (and, admittedly, probably unsurprisingly) clear from the attendees of the conference was that this was not generally favoured. Much discussion revolved around the idea of ‘legitimacy’, that consultation and engagement lends legitimacy to major projects that they would not have were they just to be ordered from on high. Although the pandemic had proved challenging, that serious efforts had been made by consultation and engagement professionals to continue to engage the public played an important part in maintaining that legitimacy.

That outreach of course was largely achieved using digital methods, and achieving the correct blend between online and in person naturally also formed a large part of the discussions. From our perspective we were glad to see that all attendees seemed to be in general agreement that not only was it important to take a purpose and suitability-led approach to using digital engagement, but also that even when you are using digital engagement the consultor and consultee at either end of that channel is still the key relationship that must be positively maintained. Digital shouldn’t just be seen as a throwaway “we’ll leave that to run” approach.

There are two other over-points that I would draw out of the day’s events, one possibly controversial, the other less so. The first is about the nature of policy change. Whilst there has been much attention focused on how policy might change, and what the Government might do, dealing with this is only half the equation. Just as important is how the environment around consultation might change. One of our speakers identified that even were the Government to nix all consultation obligations, people and communities would still expect to be consulted. Whatever changes the Government might make, the atmosphere may be totally different. Governments and government policy, let’s not forget are transient. Public feeling, significantly less so.

But to finish with the point that might have an element of controversy to it, one about the nature of the consultation profession. Those who work in consultation and engagement now indisputably represent a distinct and individual profession. Ideas that it’s just a branch of marketing or comms no longer really hold water, and though often practiced in groups with, and sharing skills with those groups, it’s amply clear that it is not necessarily as easy as it might appear to transit between them.

With the development of the profession into a more distinct category of its own comes additional points to consider. Firstly, and this was highlighted by multiple speakers throughout the conference, we need to think about the future and development of the profession. We need to think about how we can help to actively create the consultors of the future. One of the things that came out of the conference was how useful it would be to have more STEM-trained people in consultation teams, who can help with the communication of complicated or technical information. To achieve that, we’ll need to bring them in early.

As professionals, and this is the controversial part of the first point, I wonder if we need to become a little more assertive as a profession. We are the experts in what we do, engage with the public. We know what we are doing. I think sometimes it’s easy to get defensive when our consultations are challenged, or to accept that we might have to again patiently explain to an executive or other senior decisionmaker why consultation is important and not just something that needs to be ticked off a list. What if we didn’t have to do that? What if we were more assertive, and instead of having to do that at every consultation, we instead insisted on giving incoming a decision-makers a brief on it at the start of their term. One of the phrases used during that conference was that some people still consider consultation the ‘cuddly stuff’. Let’s stop being cuddly. Let’s be secure in our knowledge that we are the experts, and our work is critical. And let’s make others understand that too.