Role A:

You are a member of the community engagement team at LTA.

As you are aware, contractors are required to create a newsletter a few times a year for the neighborhoods surrounding major construction projects, containing info on common issues like noise, traffic disruptions and etc.

The design and productions of these are the responsibility of the individual contractor companies. 

Recently, a review was conducted which suggested the need to professionalize the newsletters, as the current design is not professionally done.  The writing is done in-house by the contractors’ public relations officers who are not equipped to write professionally, and the layout and design are typically done by printing houses with little design capabilities.

You would like to convince contractors of the need to level up and professionalize their content and design by hiring an external design firm. 

Key to this is pushing digital engagement as well— not just a newsletter but having the design firm create digital formats of the content for a variety of platforms.

 Of the 10 major contractors you liaise with, 6 have already gotten on board and you even have a few of the newly updated newsletters published by them. 

 2 groups are slow adopters, and 2 are actively pushing back: they don’t see the need to do it, as it costs more money (from very little in design costs, increasing to around 7000 SGD).

One benefit though is a saving in printing, as more efficient newsletters can be 4 rather than 20 pages long.

You are going to be meeting with the public relations office of one of the holdout contractors soon.

You have already spoken with the LTA Rail Construction team, and they have helped set this meeting up. They support your idea and have been pleased with the results, but they would like you to do the convincing in this situation, rather than using their positional power. 

 Convince the contractor.  😁