The Commercial Case for Early Stakeholder Engagement in Infrastructure
Roelof van den Berg CEO of Gap Infrastructure Corporation( GIC)
South Africa’ s infrastructure ambitions remain high, but fiscal headroom is tight, and emphasis on cost efficiency and delivery certainty has never mattered more. However, international experience suggests that infrastructure projects rarely unravel because of engineering errors. More often, they falter when stakeholder relationships break down.
Globally, we see the same fault-lines emerge again and again – communities engaged once plans are already fixed, governance structures that fragment accountability, and coordination failures that only surface once construction is already
underway. In the absence of stakeholder engagement, perspectives can clash, leading to delays, disputes, cost escalations, and reputational damage.
In other words, just as infrastructure must be planned in relation to other infrastructure to ensure closer integration and long-term coherence, the same logic must be applied to stakeholders. Communities, regulators, municipalities, investors, and delivery partners operate within a shared ecosystem. When those relationships are established early, duplication falls away, efficiencies are unlocked, and long-term value is strengthened across the entire delivery chain.
12 Infrastructure