Educating Stakeholders

Hi Everyone,

I'm halfway through my work placement now. I'll give you a quick review of where I'm working; I'm working at the Department of Regional Development and Land and my job is to look after the stakeholders involved in Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline. The task now is to find a way to educate land owners around the corridor about the safety involved in excavating, drilling, digging etc around the pipeline.

Last few weeks I have been e-mail Shires, government bodies and DBP engineers to get their thoughts on educating stakeholders and what they believe should be taught to landowners in particular. I'm still waiting for a few more e-mails, but so far safety seems to be everyone's priority.

I had a meeting with few of the project officers today and I suggested active learning for our stakeholders would be the best method of educating them. Since no one seems to like reading the Land Use Guideline book, I suggested complimenting it with a CD which would demonstrate the correct and incorrect safety procedures around the Natural Gas Pipeline. It was also suggested that we have safety demonstrations in relevant towns every six months to refresh people's memories.

The land use guideline is a booklet full of information for all stakeholders. Some information however, are not relevant for all stakeholders, therefore I suggested tabbing the booklet. This way stakeholders can find information that is relevant to them and it also makes the booklet seem a bit more interesting.

These suggestions are all great, but now we need to find out the budget available for the production of a new land use guidelines and what it would cost to attach all the bling we suggested. ... I have a funny feeling that will be my third post.

So far this has taught me the importance of communication and the correct ways of reaching target audience. You can write a whole booklet with excellent information, but essentially that information should get transferred to the memory of your target audience. So ... right now I'm trying to find ways of making our communication method more effective so our stakeholders will want to pick up our booklet to have a read, or watch the dvd's or log on to the website where they can recieve all the information relevant to them, that we are trying to communicate to them.

We are also thinking of using real life examples to educate stakeholders of the danger associated with pipelines. The recent San Fransisco explosion is a good starting reference. Here are some images:

Suesha :)