Mapping the mechanics of local infrastructure delivery

The Challenge:

The Western Sydney Planning Partnership (WSPP) is an initiative created through the Western Sydney City Deal to develop a planning advantage for the Council’s of the Western Parkland City.

To assist this objective, developing best practice and process mapping was needed to help all stakeholders within Councils understand the contributions system and position Councils to meet the growth in activity especially with major developments such as the new Western Sydney Nancy Bird-Walton International Airport occurring.

What we did:

Astrolabe Group worked with the eight Councils of the Western Parkland City to understand what was common and different between their approaches and then worked collaboratively to design best practice and supporting resources.

We developed a decision framework and business process maps to support the developer contributions toolkit, and providing WSPP Councils with a defined and consistent approach to infrastructure funding provided through the developer contributions system.

We developed this work with the Councils through two phases of virtual collaboration sessions to help ensure that development of the framework and process maps reflected their user experience and user requirements.

The first phase involved individual workshops with Councils to understand how they navigate specific Development Contributions (s7.11 and s7.12) and planning agreements. These provided an opportunity for Councils to raise issues around implementation and highlight any pain points with current processes.

The second phase brought Councils together and involved mapping how Councils calculate, collect and report on payable contributions. Bringing the Councils together allowed for knowledge sharing and helped identify different players and functions involved in the process.

We designed the business process maps using digital tools, which allowed us to deliver dynamic digital versions of the maps in addition to print versions.