A Framework for Supporting Planning and Development of Infrastructure Projects from a Societal Perspective

Capital projects are the backbones of our society and they must go through an evolutionary process of repeated planning and analysis cycles. Ensuring a building is structurally sound, or that a tallest building will add a new image to a city is not enough: new infrastructure and urban development must be rationalised in their planning, design and operations ensuring fitness-for-purpose and adequate societal value contributions (e.g. local resource utilisation, community wealth creation etc.) within the community. In order to ensure value creation and complete social acceptance, projects must be planned and developed by aligning the needs and requirements of the wider community proactively. This research develops an experimental framework aiming to facilitate holistic decision making on capital projects. Adopting the Social Network Analysis (SNA) based innovative methodology, a framework for quantifying social value in infrastructure projects has been demonstrated. Based on an Australia case study, the process of integration of representative community views of extended stakeholders over planning, development and operation phases in capital projects has been highlighted. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is considered to be one of the highly appropriate research methods for enquiring the complex patterns of interactions between stakeholders associated with the capital projects. The new framework will potentially assist in replacing the traditional top-down planning processes and promoting sophistication in developing socially responsive infrastructure within built environment.