For Victorian infrastructure projects
A read of how your project's community and politics are likely to behave, from outside the project team. Repeated at regular intervals, so the project team, the board and investors can see the risk move.
Book a twenty-minute call How a review works →Independence
This is an independent review conducted by a risk expert with over 20 years experience in community engagement. It gives the project team a view of community and political risk from outside the project.
How a review works
Each review is a desktop assessment from the public record and my register of similar infrastructure proposals.
New council positions, new groups, media coverage, notice windows opened or closed, and movement along the opposition trajectory. On a first review, this section establishes the baseline.
The stage opposition has reached and the direction it is moving. Who is carrying it, since a pre-existing civic association behaves differently from a campaign formed for one project. How and when the community found out about the project, and when it organised.
What the approval pathway leaves the community, and therefore whether pressure stays inside the application or moves to council, members of parliament and the media.
Council posture, local members' stated positions and recorded votes held separately, and the electoral context.
The concerns likely to lead and the ones likely to stick. An expectation band in three layers: what government now expects; what other sectors have already normalised; and what the local council, community groups and media are asking for.
Options available at the project's current stage, including opportunities for building social licence.
A short summary of the community and political risks identified, with their direction since the last review, in a form that can be carried into the project's risk register and board or investor reporting.
From the register
I maintain a register that tracks when each community found out about a proposal, how, when it organised, and what it did next. Read across projects, the pattern is consistent. The current register covers Victorian data centre proposals; the method applies to any project where community and political risk sits on the critical path.
One northern Melbourne data centre proposal, 2026
The community was asking questions five weeks before notice opened, and organised three weeks after the window had closed. With no route left inside the process, opposition moved to council, members of parliament, the media and the election.
On a proposal in Melbourne's south-east, 93 days passed before residents learned of it. Once they did, they organised within two days.
A proposal in Melbourne's north was approved in 2024. The organised community campaign against it came in 2026.
Fees
About
Around twenty years in community relations, stakeholder management and infrastructure engagement across renewable energy, transport, mining and urban development, working both for proponents and alongside the communities and councils on the receiving end of their projects.
I build and maintain sector registers from planning records, planning assessment reports, council resolutions, Hansard and parliamentary petitions — currently covering Victorian data centre proposals. Public lists of projects exist. What the register adds is a consistent read of how community and political opposition has formed on each project: when the community found out, how, when it organised, and what it did next.
Past projects and roles are on LinkedIn →Get in touch
A twenty-minute call is enough to establish whether a first review is worth doing.
I'll be in touch within a working day. If it's urgent, email me directly at megan@meganwalkeradvisory.com.au.
Or email directly: megan@meganwalkeradvisory.com.au