海角社区

Decoding Development: Strategies for Assessment Success

Thursday 11.15am-12.15pm

• Peta Harwood M海角社区
• Matthew Kelly R海角社区
• Presenter tba

Peta Harwood M海角社区
Taking the angst out of development assessment

Development assessment can be a challenging tussle between applicant and assessor. Applicants may experience what they feel is red tape, endless information requests, delays, radio silence or uncertainty. Local government assessment managers may experience abuse, poor quality applications, high workloads, Councillor and submitter phone calls, concerns and questions. But it need not be this way. Brisbane City Council’s development assessment team can’t always give a fast approval every time, but we can be timely, transparent and work together with applicants, not against them. We are using regular applicant engagement, surveys, demand forecasting and various other incentives and tools to be consistent, informing, helpful and satisfied.

For the past couple of years Brisbane City Council has been conducting post decision surveys on all of its application types. We have also met with frequent applicant firms on multiple occasions through the year to discuss our relationships, frustrations, highlights or questions generally, not on any specific application. Based on feedback we have improved our communication materials and forms, changed our processes, praised and recognised our best staff and introduced new incentives.

We have also been using and refining a demand forecast model to predict our application lodgement incoming volumes to adjust our resourcing. This model uses external indicators such as business confidence and recent past lodgements to help us plan ahead.

I will share the simple transferable methods used, the outputs and findings, and the changes we have made including the pleasing results of these changes.

Our approach and learnings can be applied to any local government in Queensland in part or in full as development assessment is the same throughout Queensland and it is really a human centred process of negotiation and compromise to reach a great community and economic development outcome. Often conferences focus on emerging policy and strategic issues, but this presentation will be relevant to the vast cohort of the profession, either public or private, who are involved in delivering the immediate built environment outcomes for our cities and towns. While the work has been data and evidence based, the results benefit the people in planning and communities.

Matthew Kelly R海角社区
Why we need psychological safety in DA

It is generally understood that DA Planners are coping it hard from almost all angles at the moment. Whether it be developers, politicians, or the media, almost every comment includes things such as ‘too slow’, ‘they don’t care’ or ‘they don’t understand’. But I for one know that most consultants/developers always have that one local government planner that people will go to, to ask for help. Often, they will even actively demand that their applications are assigned to them. Why is that?

People would have said, that’s because they have a good relationship. But I think there is more too it. I’m proposing that whilst the relationship might be strong, its possibly very likely that it’s a psychological safe environment.

Defined by the Harvard Business School, psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of a team that it’s OK to take risks, to express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences. So given the DA process is effectively two teams coming together (the applicant and the Council), it is no wonder that by having an environment which is safe, may often lead to BETTER OUTCOMES (wow!).

By planners considering this in the DA space, planners and applicants would be far more open to taking risks, having frank and open conversations, and EVEN allowing for mistakes and shortcomings which does happen across the assessment process.

So my question is how can practitioners create these environments and how can you assist with this? Come, lets talk, I know it will be worth it.

Speaker tba