Regenstrategic kal 1

Public & community engagement 
building insight and impact

On-the-ground community engagement and deep local insights, guided by internationally recognised social performance principles.

ReGen Strategic runs community relations programs for mining, energy, and infrastructure projects across WA and the eastern states. Our people have lived and worked in regional and remote Australia for more than twenty years. That knowledge goes into every engagement we do.

Our work is practical and on the ground. We handle community engagement strategy, community liaison, neighbourhood consultation, grievance management, and the design of community benefit sharing frameworks that deliver real value to the communities hosting your project. We work according to IAP2 guidelines, and to the expectations of project lenders, investors, and offtake partners.

Our consultants have held community-facing roles inside South32, Chevron, and Wesfarmers, and across a range of contractors and developers. We know how community promises get made, how they get kept, and what happens inside the business when they do not. We can translate community expectations into language a project director can act on, and translate project realities into language a community will accept.

For renewable energy projects, we help developers clear the social licence milestones that investors, lenders, and all levels of government now expect. For mining and major infrastructure, we build the long-term presence and trust that keeps operations steady through approvals, construction, operation, and closure.

Our role is to design programs your own team can run, support you where specialist capacity is needed, and step in directly on the harder moments.

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    Community

    relations and communications to build support for major projects, clean energy and social change.

    Community services

    Our engagement methodology is guided by internationally recognised principles, including the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum. Using the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) principles and techniques as a guide, ReGen’s community engagement consultants
    work with your organisation to identify and engage with key communities and influential stakeholders.

    • Develop engagement strategies that are grounded in community understanding and research
    • Clearly define and agree on the expected level of engagement and methods of communication
    • Facilitate fit-for-purpose opportunities for two-way communications with community members
    • Guidance on community benefits to ensure equity, accessibility and transparency
    • Quantitative and qualitative research, inclusive of polling, surveys, focus groups, and workshops

    With a heritage in strategic communication, ReGen Strategic is highly skilled in simplifying complex issues and communicating them effectively. We’ll help you communicate effectively with your community and keep them engaged.

    • Build effective communications plans to reach target communities
    • Coordinate engagement and communications against set objectives
    • Agree on key messaging for each stage of the delivery timeline
    • Integrate with our CRM to direct message via SMS and email
    • Monthly management reporting against communication objectives

    ReGen’s communications and media professionals provide services that ensure you are not left flat-footed. More importantly, we build proactive strategies that define and deliver against your objectives across all platforms – integrating across digital, social or traditional.

    • Build and execute a proactive media and social media strategy for your project or business
    • Coach spokespeople to ensure they respond effectively and consistently
    • Secure coverage for stories that are important across all platforms
    • Agree on reactive media responses and strategy
    • Create media releases and social media posts that cut through
    • Understand and build relationships with journalists
    • Media monitoring (via Streem), alerts and monthly reporting

Case Study

Talison Lithium

Building trust for major capacity expansion

The challenge

Talison Lithium is undertaking major expansion projects at its Greenbushes operations near established regional communities. The scale, sensitivity and approvals requirements created a complex engagement environment, requiring a structured program to build trust, address concerns and support confident regulatory decision-making.

Talison page

The pathway

Designed and delivered a multi-year stakeholder engagement strategy aligned with IAP2 principles

Led early landholder engagement and broad community consultation across multiple towns

Delivered community information sessions and in-depth workshops

Established a Stakeholder Reference Committee for ongoing dialogue and oversight

Supported Ministerial, agency and regulator engagement through briefings and site visits

Systematically captured and integrated feedback into approvals and mitigation planning

The result

The engagement program established strong foundations of trust, transparency and accountability. Community concerns were clearly identified and prioritised, directly informing mitigation measures and project commitments. The work supported State and Commonwealth approvals processes and enabled sustained, constructive relationships with communities and landholders. Ongoing operation of the Stakeholder Reference Committee ensures continued dialogue as projects progress.

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Stories

The case for proactive engagement

Proponents and their advisors will easily recognise examples of communities mobilising to make their influence felt. This is rarely due to bad faith actors, but rather driven by compressed timeframes and occurs when organisations underestimate the underlying community sentiment.  When consultation stops feeling genuine  The case for proactive community involvement rests on how

May 27, 2026
Rod Mapstone OLY | Community relations, Social performance, Stakeholder engagement

What people say about us

Steve booth

George Weston Foods

ReGen supported George Weston Foods in the identification of a site for our new animal feed processing plant in Western Australia. This involved engaging with the community and key stakeholders across multiple potential sites, then working on securing state and local government approvals for our chosen site in Kwinana.

Steve Booth | Head of Government Relations & External Affairs

Tanya steinbeck

Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA)

ReGen conducted a perception audit for UDIA that provided access to their deep and extensive list of government contacts, which provided a truly independent perspective on the quality of our stakeholder relationships. Through this report we have been ableTo maximise the effectiveness of our advocacy approach to deliver great places and more housing choice across the State.

Tanya Steinbeck | Chief Executive Officer

Jeremy kenna

Iluka

The ability of ReGen to articulate the incredibly complex nature of stakeholder expectations from an ESG perspective is invaluable. The approach taken by the team was to not simply provide a blanket solution, but to really drill down into the detail of what our challenges were and to tailor their support to fit our objectives.

Jeremy Kenna | Group Manager – Communities &Indigenous Affairs Australia

Isaac hinton

InterContinental Energy

ReGen’s breadth of skills and knowledge have been instrumental in helping us to connect with government and the local media. It is a pleasure working with an organisation that understands our positioning and is aligned with environmental sustainability.

Isaac Hinton | Head of Australia

Dr ray macdonald

Western Green Energy Hub

We are a small team covering the many aspects of strategic external engagement and communications required of a new, phased green energy project. With their broad suite of experience and skills, ReGen has added considerable value to our thinking and the way we engage.

Dr Ray Macdonald | Chief Executive Officer

Ryan watts

TransAlta

ReGen is our partner of choice for stakeholder engagement and strategic communication matters and has worked tirelessly to understand our business. Their pragmatic and client-focused solutions consistently exceed our expectations.

Ryan Watts | Business Development Manager

Darren munday

Consumers of Mental Health WA

ReGen were highly professional and approachable in helping us to learn more about what it feels like to be in front of a camera or microphone. The team were very well researched when it came time to be firing the questions. I would highly recommend ReGen for their media training.

Darren Munday | Chief Executive Officer

Golden sedayu

Golden Sedayu

ReGen’s work has been invaluable in ensuring we maintain a strong and trusted relationship with the WA Government. They are available whenever we need them and their knowledge of government policy is unparalleled. They have also exceeded all expectations in terms of media relations.

Andrew Sugiaputra | Managing Director

Captain michael edwards

Gascoyne Gateway

ReGen has helped us strategically plan and engage with key stakeholders, while managing our media relations and community engagement. They are now supporting us in our regenerative approach to sustainability, with the objective of delivering a climate positive, nature positive and people positive project.

Captain Michael Edwards | CEO

FAQ

Frequently 
asked questions

Community engagement is the practice of building and keeping relationships with the communities affected by your operation or project. It covers everything from initial consultation through approvals, to ongoing liaison during construction and operation, to the conversations that close out a site. Good community engagement is two-way, documented, and proportionate to the scale of the activity. It is not the same as communications or public relations, though all three can feed into one another.

Mining operates in places where the community is directly and materially affected, often over decades. Without sustained community acceptance, projects face delays, protests, withdrawn approvals, workforce turnover, and reputational damage that reaches investors and regulators. Doing community relations poorly costs a lot more than doing it well. Our team has held community-facing roles inside Tier 1 miners and we know what happens when things go wrong on the ground.

Community benefit sharing is structuring a project so that measurable, material benefits flow to the communities hosting it. For renewable energy in Australia, it has moved from optional to effectively mandatory. The shift is being driven by the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner’s guidelines, state renewable energy zone frameworks, and the expectations of institutional investors and offtake partners. We design benefit sharing frameworks covering neighbour agreements, community funds, local employment and procurement, and shared ownership options where they fit.

You go there. Our consultants have lived and worked in regional and remote WA for decades. We travel regularly to the Pilbara, the Goldfields, the South West, the Mid West, and the Kimberley, and we design engagement around the rhythms of those communities (mustering season, school holidays, cultural obligations) rather than imposing a city calendar on them. We also work closely with Traditional Owners and their representative bodies, with respect for cultural protocols and the right to free, prior, and informed consent.

Social licence to operate is the ongoing acceptance a project or company has from its host communities and society more broadly. It is not a certificate. It is a state of relationship. You build it through consistent, respectful, two-way engagement over time, by keeping the commitments you make, by responding well when something goes wrong, and by delivering real benefits the community can see and touch. Our work helps clients build and hold social licence across the life of a project.

Yes. We are regularly brought in when community issues have escalated to the point where they are affecting approvals, regulator relationships, or project timelines. In those cases we move fast to understand the full picture, steady the relationship, design a recovery plan, and rebuild the trust and information flow needed to get the project back on track. We are direct with clients about what is recoverable and what is not, and we do not take on recovery work we cannot deliver.