Townsville City – Community Engagement on Major Projects

Townsville is located about halfway between the tip of Cape York and Brisbane. The Townsville City Council has recently entered the City Deal with the Commonwealth Government and the Queensland Government to deliver a 15 year commitment of working together to plan and deliver transformative outcomes for Townsville and its residents.

The CBD Utility Upgrades project ($43 million) involves undertaking major construction works in the CBD over four years (2015-2019). The water supply network in parts of the Townsville CBD is over 60 years old. With the increasing development of multi-storey residential and commercial properties in the CBD, Council is working to upgrade the water supply network to maintain water pressure to the increased number of buildings.

Managing Community Engagement across RegionsCommunity engagement activities have been ongoing throughout the work program with utility and transport infrastructure providers, business, residents, body corporates, regulatory agencies and internal Council service providers. Darzin is used to manage all correspondences with the stakeholders for the project.

The works have been undertaken by region: Region A – The Strand, Region B – Melton Hill and CBD East, Region C: CBD Central, Region D: CBD West, Region E: West End, Region F: South Townsville. All interactions with the affected properties are managed in Darzin stakeholder engagement software according to these regions to make it easy for the staff to track and report on the engagement activities. The project interacts with nearly seven thousand properties at some level and Darzin provides tools to slide-and-dice the data to enable reporting at individual property level, street level, and region level.

Potholing activity in the CBD. Source: Townsville City Council

Darzin enables the Council to:

• Register and keep up-to-date stakeholder and property information to send out work notifications, traffic updates, and easily draw out stakeholder contact details for letterbox drop distribution
• Register, track and respond to all public enquiries and complaints related to the project
• Document and report on all stakeholder engagement activities by region and by property.

Upon the successful implementation of Darzin for the CBD Utility Upgrades, in late 2016 the Council expanded the Darzin license to include other main development works such as Ingham Road Upgrades, Townsville City Bus Station, Lamington Road Drainage Renewal, and Southern Suburbs Pressure Main.