Implementation planning involves integrating the selected public involvement activities into the total project scope, schedule, and budget, and obtaining final buy-in from management.

Planning for Implementation

Implementation planning involves integrating the selected public involvement activities into the total project scope, schedule, and budget, and obtaining final buy-in from management. Some agencies less experienced in CSD/CSS do not yet treat public involvement as a task that must be planned and budgeted. "You never know how many meetings you are going to have to hold" is sometimes heard. Of course, one of the points of up-front stakeholder identification and rigorous planning is to find out what the needs are. The issue is no different than, for example, not performing traffic counts and then asserting "you don't know how much traffic you need to design for." Clearly, part of being successful is understanding the requirements ahead of time and knowing where to get needed resources, inside the agency or elsewhere.

While it is often stated that good public involvement is expensive, and poor public involvement is even more expensive, budgets for public involvement must be realistic. There are many ways to leverage resources; additional resources and references are presented at the end of this chapter.

Finally, a public involvement plan is a useful tool, a key element of the project implementation strategy. But, it is only a road map, and will likely require modifications as the project proceeds. For that reason, it should not be viewed as a sacred document, set in stone. Of course, it should also not be set on the shelf as an interesting but irrelevant document.