An ‘engineer–client’ framework for participation in community-scale infrastructure projects

Abstract

The importance of community participation in projects in the developing and developed world is widely recognised, despite considerable debate regarding what participation means in practice. In the developing world context, there is a distinct debate on how participation can achieve its stated goals of creating ‘ownership’ among targeted beneficiaries without becoming susceptible to elite capture or excluding marginalised groups. Projects that involve engineering analysis present a further challenge: to incorporate external technical expertise in decision-making so that project outcomes are improved, without compromising the participative process. The paper sets out a practical framework that reconciles the critical importance of early, meaningful community involvement in decision-making with the active role of the engineer as a technical adviser and facilitator. It is targeted for application in community-scale infrastructure development projects, where the community is the primary targeted beneficiary. The framework draws a parallel with a traditional engineer–client relationship, in which the client's (in this case the community's) needs and preferences drive the design process and in which final design approval rests with the client, but where the engineer plays an active role in helping to understand and interpret the client's needs and develops engineering responses through an iterative, responsive design process.