Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd

A3 Hindhead

Runner up in the Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRide Awards, Community Relations Category

Background of the A3 Project

Traffic congestion on the A3 at the Hindhead crossroad is notorious, causing noise and air pollution, and badly affecting both Hindhead itself and the surrounding countryside. The village is in danger of losing its identity. There are limited shops and services and many local people travel by car to shopping facilities elsewhere. The removal of the existing A3 through Hindhead will restore its village atmosphere, enabling wider pavements, easier parking, and street planting.

Objectives

Throughout the construction period the A3 team is committed to ensuring the safety of the public and the workforce. BBCEL employs a dedicated, full time Community Relations Officer on the project who's objectives are to:

• Keep the public fully informed about forthcoming construction and traffic management activities
• Communicate updates and changes to traffic management layouts
• Ensure all complaints and enquiries are responded to and dealt with as quickly as possible
• Build good relationships with residents, local schools and businesses, councillors, land owners and local authorities.
• Provision of 24 hour helplines
• Liaison with statutory groups, including local councils
• Promoting community relations issues to all site staff
• Involving the site team with the local community through charity events
• Co-ordinating compliance with the Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS)

Planning

Extensive planning took place with the Highways Agency, Balfour Beatty Group Media Manager, members of the communications team and project staff to create a Community Relations Plan. This included:

• Project branding, stationery and a logo was planned to give the public instantly recognisable communications
• Provision of a 24 hour helpline and email address for enquiries and complaints from members of the public
• A series of public exhibitions to publicise and inform the community of the works
• Newsletters circulated to local residents and businesses, to include:

- Project achievements to date
- Planned works for the next period
- Updates about any local interference/local communities
- Visitor centre contact details
- Environmental matters for interest

• Arrange visits to local schools to educate the children about the works, the dangers of construction sites and working in empathy with the environment

Implementation

• A 24 hour telephone help-line set up to answer all enquiries and deal with complaints
• A visitor centre opened at the site offices
• A Project Advisory Group (PAG) was set up, comprising of officers from County and District councils, as well as representatives from the statutory bodies and other key organisations supporting environmental interests. The PAG's objective is: "to assist in developing the tunnel scheme to minimise its impact on the built and highly prized natural environment and one that is broadly acceptable to the local community, while ensuring that all impacts have been addressed." As well as the PAG, a Wider Reference Group (WRG) has also been set up, comprising of representatives from local Parish and Town councils, local interest and action groups and local Councillors from the District and County councils. The objective of the WRG is similar to that of the PAG but is expected to bring much more localised input to issues that need to be considered during the development of the scheme
• A series of community exhibitions have been held with all the project staff and the Community Relations officer present for the public to meet. The last exhibition held a media session, followed by a presentation to 60 local councillors before opening to the public.
• The scheme's Community Relations Officer and the site Health & Safety Advisor have planned visits to local schools within the vicinity of the A3 Hindhead construction activities. The pupils will be informed of the dangers of entering construction sites and shown the various types of safety equipment work on site and why it is necessary to wear it

Creativity

• A project branding booklet was created and cascaded to all staff.
• The project has strong recognisable branding. All the literature produced including exhibition materials contains instantly recognisable branding.
• Pupils at the local schools are to be invited to design safety posters for the site, one of which will be chosen to be professionally produced and displayed at various locations along the length of the project

Results

The A3 Team hosted its most recent public exhibition in January 2007. It spanned two days, with over two dozen display panels on show, a virtual reality model and a three dimensional model. The event was proved a great success. We had to open an hour early because people were queuing in the street - over 2,500 people attended during the two days. Comment forms were also provided for people to complete on the day and many compliments were received

• To date nine newsletters have been produced and circulated to the local community. These have been successful in keeping residents and businesses informed of the works and maintaining good relations
• The public completed 85 comment sheets amongst them were many complimenting the exhibition content and professionalism of the team

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