Take Your Stakeholders “On a Journey through the Project”
When we asked Kate Sharkey – Communications and Social Value Advisor at Laing O’Rourke– about the largest benefit SitePodium has to offer, she words it beautifully. The app will “take your stakeholders on a journey through the project”, she says, allowing them to actively interact rather than passively watch from the sidelines. She has been working on the Milton Keynes East Development January 2023, and SitePodium became their main tool for stakeholder communication and engagement from August 2023.
As the core user of SitePodium, she is very pleased with the way it brings stakeholders together and takes them on the journey through this large project with them. Their dedicated customer careline and project email have become “relatively redundant now we have SitePodium”, Kate explains.
How did Kate move from letters, community events, and email communication to using only one software solution for all her external stakeholder communications? How does SitePodium help them ensure social value in Milton Keynes and how did the stakeholders respond? We spoke to Kate to find out.
The Milton Keynes East Development
The Milton Keynes East Development is a large construction project which has it all: outline planning for 4,000 – 4,600 homes, logistics employment space (400,000 square metre, schools, a park along the river, open spaces, and community facilities are scheduled to be built. At the same time, they have full permission to improve the infrastructure in Milton Keynes East.
At the time of writing, the project is in full swing: it started on the 1st of September 2023 and is currently scheduled to finish at the end of May 2025. SitePodium is used as the channel for informing their 837 followers of its progress. And Kate is the one actively engaging the stakeholders through the app.
The Early Days
Kate has not always worked with SitePodium on her projects. Prior to that, community engagement was mainly done through letters, community drop-in events, email, and marketing tools like Spotler. After being contacted by SitePodium and introduced to the app, Kate knew she would use it to its maximum potential.
Different alternatives were considered. Laing O’Rourke was looking for a communications tool that allowed residents, stakeholders, and a wider interested audience to follow the project timeline. Their opinion was that SitePodium would be able to do it all. Once through the company’s IT and cybersecurity, setting it up was easy. They had no problem getting the word out, as they advertised with the QR-code for downloading the app. This was done by hundreds of followers.
Kate has been a fan from the moment she was introduced to the app:
“I loved everything about SitePodium, I felt it was innovative, creative, a fantastic tool to showcase the work we were doing, highlight milestones, the app, the push notifications, the statistics were great for reporting, the ability for two-way conversations with anybody who wanted to enquire or complain or give feedback about the project. It felt like the complete package.”
What is SitePodium Used For?
SitePodium quickly grew into the main means of communication with all external stakeholders, to the extent that the customer careline and email used for the project became practically redundant. As the lead user of SitePodium, Kate is the one sending out the information to the app’s news feed. “I gather information from site including photos and amend that accordingly for the updates.”
When looking at the SitePodium feed for the Milton Keynes East Project it becomes clear that Kate does that regularly. She uses (drone) pictures to give the users a close-up, or high-up, view of what they are only able to see from the sidelines themselves. With the pictures she adds an explanation, telling the users exactly what is going on and what they can expect. This is done in a language they understand.
In turn, the stakeholders are just as active, responding to the posts with a thumbs-up (or down), with a heart or with another reaction of choice. That way, Kate is able to gauge exactly what her followers make of the developments. She can take action where needed, adjust her posts to her audience’s desires, and continue to bridge the gap between project and stakeholders around it.
SitePodium’s Added Value
By gathering followers and keeping them informed in this way, she is able to take them on a journey through the project, inviting them to take on an active role in it. The largest stakeholders, such as Residents and businesses of Moulsoe, Newport Pagnell and Milton Keynes, are not passively watching but they are actively involved and informed. This level of interactive engagement is very difficult to achieve with only the communications channels that were available in the past.
SitePodium has proved to be a valuable contributor to this project. According to Kate, it has many benefits that assist her and her colleagues on a daily basis. “Users are able to understand key dates and milestones”, she comments. “They get instant alerts on the active steps we are taking to ensure minimal disruption and inconvenience.” In fact, it has also helped the environment and the project’s budget because “as new information is published – such as public engagement events, newsletters, community initiatives and much more – the requirement to send letters, newsletters, and updates via the postal system is almost eliminated.”
Stakeholder Feedback
Kate is not only active at the front end of SitePodium, she is also keeping a close eye on what happens behind the scenes. SitePodium’s reporting tool, which tells her how her stakeholders and residents respond to her posts, is of great value to her.
“We have had some very positive feedback from our stakeholders and the client we are working for”, she says. The app represents what stakeholders have come to expect and know and it is set up in a format they are familiar with. The Milton Keynes East Project has recently registered with the Considerate Constructors’ Scheme, a large independent organisation, encouraging social value and engagement in the building sector. SitePodium assists with meeting their requirements.
The Future with SitePodium
Kate thinks that the fact that she is able to “keep our residents and stakeholders up to date in real time” is one of the major strengths that SitePodium has to offer. Therefore, she is currently looking to “roll out SitePodium to other projects” as well.
When asked if she has any concerns about the app, she cannot think of much. For her it is user-friendly, easy to implement, and really effective. She is sure our collaboration will continue into the future. At SitePodium we could not wish for much more than that.
