Strategic assessments: What you need to know
Strategic assessments are a powerful tool for planning development, streamlining the approval process, and maximising conservation gains across a landscape or region. In recognition of this potential, state governments are increasingly using them to prioritise new areas for development and growth, and there’s an increasing appetite for conservation planning at a regional or landscape scale. And yet strategic assessments across Australia have met with mixed success. Some have been approved but have since struggled during the implementation process. Others have been delayed or abandoned after the length, cost and complexity of the assessments has become clear.
We have seen this done well and badly. Here are our thoughts on the crucial things you need to understand to complete a strategic assessment:
Scale
Budget
Experience
Uncertainty
Collaboration
Each of these is discussed further below.
Scale
Strategic assessments take years to complete. Typically three. If you get everything right, you have all the data you need ready to go, none of the political priorities change, and you keep changes to an absolute minimum you could do one in two years. Expect three.
This is enough time for a proponent’s priorities to radically change. For government clients this is long enough to overlap the political cycle. For private sector clients it’s long enough that market conditions and business strategies can change. New species or ecological communities may be listed as threatened or endangered over the course of the strategic assessment. Staff turnover is guaranteed.
Strategic assessments tend to enjoy bipartisan support and typically survive most of these changes. But making ongoing revisions to the planned development or conservation programs adds time and expense to the project. The cumulative effect of a series of seemingly minor changes can delay projects by years.
If you are considering a strategic assessment, recognise that it will take years and plan accordingly. Think about how you will continue to procure services over the life of the project.
Budget
Strategic assessments typically end up costing somewhere in the low seven figures. A simple assessment of a smaller area could sneak in under a million dollars, but expect any substantial project to cost more.
Firstly, strategic assessments are complex. Most of them are carried out by governments looking to support urban expansion of major cities. Humans chose the locations of those cities because they had a nice climate, fresh water, and readily available natural resources. Plants and animals appreciate the same things, so our cities are generally in areas of high biodiversity. Biodiversity surveys, groundwater assessments and other expert technical input are often required. Enabling sustainable growth in these areas requires careful consideration and planning.
Secondly, strategic assessments cover huge quantities of investment over long timeframes. Approvals for these assessments often apply for 30 years or more. One of our recent strategic assessments in NSW was intended to support the development of an estimated 725,000 dwellings. If these dwellings have an average cost of $500,000 per dwelling that’s over $350 billion in investment just in housing. A strategic assessment plays an important role in guiding how and where that investment occurs and the lives of a generation of residents, developers and businesses.
Given the time scale and uncertainty (see below), quoting for a strategic assessment is fraught. Whatever number comes in on the tender proposal, understand that variations are highly likely and that this is an important and complex job that will take time and care to get right. Industry experience to date suggests that the necessary time and care usually ends up costing upwards of $1 million. Substantially cheaper proposals should raise questions about whether the tenderer actually understands the scale and complexity of the project or whether the low price is intended to win the job so they can start submitting variations.
Experience
Let’s say you work for a state government or maybe a large mining company and the decision has been made to carry out a strategic assessment. Chances are it’s the first time you or anyone in your team has worked on a strategic assessment. You’ll contact the Commonwealth Environment Department (currently called the Department of Agriculture, Water, and Environment or DAWE) and they will put together a team of people to work on the strategic assessment and start writing the terms of reference.
At the moment there is no dedicated strategic assessment team within the environment department. Instead, strategic assessments are evaluated by the teams responsible for the state in which they occur. So far there have only been a few strategic assessments undertaken in Australia. Once you factor in staff turnover it’s entirely possible that none of the people in your organisation or working with you at DAWE will have done a strategic assessment before.
The sooner you can bring some experience to your project the better. Once the terms of reference are finalised they set the direction of the entire strategic assessment. Ideally, these should be considered by people with a deep understanding of how these projects succeed and fail before that happens.
The obvious place to find experience is from consultants. But be aware that the same factors that limit experience within DAWE also apply to environmental consulting companies - there have only been a few strategic assessments in Australia and there is no guarantee that the consultants you hire have actually carried out this kind of work before. Confirm that the consulting team you work with has carried out strategic assessments and that the people with this experience will actually be available to work on and guide your project regularly.
Uncertainty
Uncertainty is a huge part of completing and implementing a strategic assessment. From scoping where and how a strategic assessment could be useful, to engaging consultants to do the assessment, to gaining approval from the regulator, and even critical decisions about implementation that need to be made over the whole life of the approval, there are always key pieces of information that may be missing or change.
For example: Strategic assessments typically require field surveys to know what kinds of environmental values need to be protected. Those surveys could find a rare orchid in a patch of vegetation next to a major road, and suddenly areas that were previously considered suitable for development might now be potential habitat for a critically endangered species and require protection. This could cause delays and additional costs as plans and impact calculations and offset programs are revised and updated.
Uncertainty could also arise from regulators or other stakeholders. New species or ecological communities can be added to the list of threatened or protected matters. Policies or guidance from the environment department can change. Stakeholders who are interested in participating in the strategic assessment (and thus avoiding or offsetting impacts in a way that is consistent with the assessment) can decide to act otherwise.
And this uncertainty does not stop when the assessment is approved. The rare orchid in the first example could be identified ten years into the strategic assessment. The programs that guide development and conservation need to be able to adapt to this new information to protect relevant areas while still facilitating appropriate development.
In part, this uncertainty can be managed with foresight and experience. Many of the changes or unexpected challenges that arise on projects have happened to other strategic assessments. A wealth of experience can help to anticipate this issues and smooth their impact.
But in projects of this temporal and spatial scale, no level of experience will be enough to completely remove uncertainty. Successful strategic assessments are built around a process of iteration and revision that allows for change and uncertainty. And the development and conservation programs they produce are built to balance certainty for regulators, developers and the community with flexibility so that these programs can be implemented successfully for 30 years or more.
Collaboration
Successful strategic assessments are built on collaboration between the proponent, the consulting team, and the environment department.
Effective and timely work from each of these groups, combined with clear and upfront communication, is essential to getting good outcomes for regulators, stakeholders and the environment. Proponents should enter into a strategic assessment thinking about which parts they can hand to the consulting team and what work they will have to do themselves. Consider whether you or the consulting team should determine:
Where will funding for conservation activities come from? What are the limits on this funding? Who will undertake conservation activities or acquire offsets?
How will the strategic assessment be implemented? Who will decide whether a development meets the various constraints that the strategic assessment sets out? What legal or regulatory frameworks will be required? What amendments will be needed?
Who are the key stakeholders? How will they be engaged? In what ways does the strategic assessment rely on the co-operation of landholders, developers or others?
Who will do monitoring, evaluation, reporting and improvement? What will happen if key benchmarks or performance indicators are not met?
In our experience, strategic assessments work best when the consulting team engage directly with the proponents, DAWE and even (with appropriate oversight) stakeholders. Engage consultants you can trust so that you can work as collaborators. Expect to be responsible for critical pieces of the strategic assessment and ensure adequate resources are available to do quality work efficiently.
Conclusion
Understanding these five concepts at the start of a strategic assessment can save an enormous amount of time, effort and money. In our experience, when things go wrong it is usually connected to misunderstandings about scale, budget, experience, uncertainty or collaboration. For example:
Proponents have not anticipated how long the assessment will take or have not budgeted appropriately.
Proponents have engaged consultants with inadequate experience (who have often themselves underestimated the time or budget for the work) who have not been able to address the environment department’s concerns.
During work on the strategic assessment an unexpected environmental constraint has been identified and proponents have been unable to find a development outcome that meets their needs while fitting within this constraint.
Proponents have not allocated enough resources within their organisations to do the work they need to (determine funding arrangements, engage with key stakeholders, make critical decisions about planning and conservation strategies) which delays projects until they become untenable.
The development and conservation programs that are approved are inflexible and are unable to adjust over the life of the strategic assessment.
Starting your strategic assessment with these concepts in mind can help to ensure that your assessment is carried out efficiently, that approval is granted smoothly, and that the approved development and conservation actions are implemented effectively.