ATI Bulletin_June 2025 - Flipbook - Page 4
Q&A with Carlton Byrd
Having an effective stakeholder engagement plan is an essential
step in the development of any infrastructure project. Why is it so
important?
Whether you’re developing a private infrastructure project or a public one,
you’re going to interact with a number of stakeholders, such as the project’s
off-takers, users, or the community that you’re integrating the project into.
Identifying and engaging those various stakeholders from the very beginning
is fundamental to ensuring the project’s outcome, and it’s something on
which ATI places a lot of emphasis. We integrate this identification and
engagement process throughout our entire investment cycle, beginning with
the sourcing, as it’s an effective way to help us identify both potential hurdles
and opportunities early on.
Not doing this can result in a sticky situation later on, when you’ve already
spent time and money on a project that may now be at risk of being delayed
or canceled. These dynamics can kill a deal, and you need to be aware of
them. Identifying stakeholders, listening to potentially overlooked groups,
and evaluating concerns early are important elements to assessing the risks
in a project.
What does ATI do to ensure it is dedicating the right resources to the
stakeholder engagement process?
A big part of executing a successful engagement strategy is making the effort
to establish connections. This is especially important with groups or
individuals who are not advocates of your project. You need to identify where
the opposition might lie and be willing to listen to those concerns before they
develop into roadblocks.
4
