What does a stakeholder engagement consultant do?

A stakeholder engagement consultant identifies the groups affected by a project, assesses their interests and influence, designs the engagement strategy, and delivers or supports the consultation program. At Ace Strategies this work is led by senior consultants and covers the full sequence from stakeholder mapping through to evaluation.

Is Ace Strategies a stakeholder engagement agency or a consultancy?

Both descriptions apply. We are an Adelaide-based agency whose senior consultants design and deliver stakeholder engagement end-to-end — strategy, consultation, delivery and evaluation.

Do you run community consultation programs?

Yes. We design and deliver structured community consultation — sessions, briefings, submissions and feedback channels — for projects and organisations across South Australia and nationally, and we prepare the consultation reports that document the process for approval bodies.

Where are you based, and where do you work?

Our head office is in Adelaide, South Australia. We deliver stakeholder engagement across Australia — our case work spans South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory — and our team includes a former Northern Territory Minister with extensive experience across remote communities, multicultural sectors and complex stakeholder environments.

How do we get started?

We start with a stakeholder mapping session: a working meeting where we map your stakeholder landscape, identify the risks, and outline the engagement approach your project needs, before you commit to a larger program.

A Stakeholder Engagement Agency for Complex Projects

Community consultation, engagement strategy and social licence — designed in Adelaide, delivered across Australia.

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Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder engagement, from mapping to social licence

Ace Strategies is a stakeholder engagement agency based in Adelaide, South Australia. We design and deliver stakeholder engagement for organisations whose projects depend on public trust: defence businesses, health and aged care providers, water utilities, local councils, and developers. Our consultants map your stakeholder landscape, build the engagement strategy, run the community consultation, and help you earn the social licence your project needs to proceed.

Empathy, understanding, trust and consistency form the foundation of this work. We begin from your stakeholders' perspective — their interests, their concerns, and their history with your organisation — and design engagement that addresses each group on its own terms.

What is stakeholder engagement?

Stakeholder engagement is the structured process of identifying the people and groups affected by an organisation or project, understanding their interests and concerns, and involving them in decisions through consultation, dialogue and feedback. Stakeholders include communities, customers, employees, Traditional Owners, government, industry bodies and advocacy groups. Effective engagement gives a project three practical advantages: earlier warning of risks, better-informed decisions, and community acceptance — the social licence to operate — that regulators and investors increasingly expect organisations to demonstrate.

A social licence to operate (also written social license to operate) is the ongoing acceptance a community grants an organisation or project. It is earned through genuine engagement, kept commitments and visible local benefit, and it can be withdrawn when trust breaks down.

Our Approach

The Ace Methodology

Our engagement work follows the four-stage model we apply across the firm — Discovery, Strategy, Execution, Evaluation — adapted for community and stakeholder engagement as follows.

Stakeholder mapping

We identify and analyse the full stakeholder landscape and assess each group's interests, influence and expectations. The deliverable is a stakeholder map — often presented as a stakeholder engagement matrix — with risk-weighted priorities that direct effort to the groups and issues most likely to affect your outcome.

Empathetic analysis

We examine each group's perspective in depth, including its historical relationship with your organisation: past consultations, past commitments, and past grievances that will shape how new engagement is received. Where the picture is incomplete, our research and polling service with DemosAU measures community sentiment directly, giving the strategy a base of tested opinion.

Research and polling

Tailored strategy

We develop a customised engagement approach for each stakeholder group, defining the message, the messenger, the forum and the sequence for each. The deliverable is a stakeholder engagement plan your team can execute: who is engaged, how, when, by whom, and how success is measured. Where a client wants the structure rather than a single campaign, the same work produces a reusable stakeholder engagement framework.

Delivery and evaluation

We implement alongside you — community sessions, briefings, and one-on-one stakeholder meetings — or train your team to deliver. We then measure engagement against the plan and adjust as stakeholder positions shift, so the social licence holds over the life of the project rather than only at approval.

What a stakeholder engagement plan includes

A complete stakeholder engagement plan documents:

Stakeholder identification and mapping — every affected group, assessed for interest, influence and current sentiment
Engagement objectives — what the project needs from each group, from awareness through to active support
Engagement methods — consultation sessions, briefings, submissions, surveys, advisory groups and one-on-one meetings, matched to each audience
Key messages — the project's case, framed for each group's actual concerns
Schedule and responsibilities — timing tied to project and regulatory milestones, with named owners
Feedback and closure mechanisms — how community input is recorded, considered and reported back
Evaluation measures — the indicators that show whether engagement is working

We prepare these plans as standalone engagements, as the first stage of a delivered program, or under a standing stakeholder engagement advisory relationship.

Free guide and template

Writing the strategy yourself?

Our six-step guide to writing a stakeholder engagement strategy covers mapping by power and interest, the five recognised levels of participation, the government and lobbying rules that apply in Australia, and how to measure whether any of it worked. It runs on a worked example throughout and comes with a template.

Read the guide

Our Services

Stakeholder Engagement Services

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Community engagement

We build and maintain positive relationships between organisations and the communities they affect, from project neighbours to whole regions. Our community engagement strategies are built on two-way engagement: consulting early, feeding community views into project decisions while those decisions are still open, and reporting back so people can see how their input was used. Our community engagement services cover capital-city projects and regional South Australia, and our senior team brings direct experience working with remote and multicultural communities and complex environments.

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Community consultation and investment

We design and run structured community consultation programs — public sessions, submission processes, briefings and feedback channels — that satisfy regulatory requirements and community expectations, and we document them in consultation reports suitable for approval processes. Alongside consultation, we help clients design community investment programs that deliver measurable, lasting local benefit.

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Crisis and issues management

When an issue ignites — a contested development, a misinformation campaign, an operational incident — we manage the stakeholder dimension of the response. Because we map stakeholders before problems emerge, we know which groups must hear from you first and through which channel.

Media management · Crisis and issues management

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Relationship building and stakeholder management

We create and strengthen the relationships that matter to your organisation — with community leaders, industry bodies, Traditional Owners and decision-makers — through planned, consistent contact programs. Sustained stakeholder relationship management gives an organisation standing credit to draw on when approvals, disputes or crises arrive.

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Reputation enhancement and social impact

We help you build and protect your public profile, and we measure and communicate the social impact behind it: employment created, services delivered, and community benefit realised. Documented social impact gives stakeholders, media and government concrete evidence of your contribution.

Reputation management

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Organisational culture

Public engagement succeeds when internal culture supports it. We help organisations build the collaborative, transparent internal culture that makes external commitments credible, aligning staff behaviour with the undertakings made to communities.

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Stakeholder engagement training

We train your own people in stakeholder engagement skills — stakeholder mapping, consultation design, difficult conversations and pitch delivery — so the capability remains in-house after the engagement ends. Our tradeshow pitch training masterclass for the Defence Teaming Centre, delivered in partnership with Defence SA, prepared defence industry leaders ahead of industry forums.

Defence Teaming Centre case study

Sectors

Where we do this work

Our stakeholder engagement consultants work across the sectors where social licence carries the highest stakes:

Defence and industry — engagement and pitch capability across the defence ecosystem (Defence Teaming Centre)
Health and aged care — stakeholder strategy for the Australian General Practice Network, and engagement supporting Helping Hand's North Adelaide wellbeing precinct, the first project supported as essential infrastructure under South Australia's development assessment framework
Water and infrastructure — engagement and communications for SA Water
Local government — community and stakeholder engagement planning for councils, including the Advocacy, Communication and Engagement plan built for The Flinders Ranges Council; community engagement for local councils is a distinct practice area within this service
Property, tourism and regional development — community engagement for Noble Investments' Hindmarsh Island eco-village, working with State Government, local council and Traditional Owners

Proof

The strategic guidance and knowledge provided empowered us to make critical business decisions and achieve success.

Susan Pearce — Chief Executive Officer, Australian General Practice Network
Read the case study

The attention to detail and strategic approach to stakeholder engagement and communications was effective and highly valued.

Amanda Lewry — General Manager Growth, SA Water
Read the case study

Common questions

What does a stakeholder engagement consultant do?: A stakeholder engagement consultant identifies the groups affected by a project, assesses their interests and influence, designs the engagement strategy, and delivers or supports the consultation program. At Ace Strategies this work is led by senior consultants and covers the full sequence from stakeholder mapping through to evaluation.
Is Ace Strategies a stakeholder engagement agency or a consultancy?: Both descriptions apply. We are an Adelaide-based agency whose senior consultants design and deliver stakeholder engagement end-to-end — strategy, consultation, delivery and evaluation.
Do you run community consultation programs?: Yes. We design and deliver structured community consultation — sessions, briefings, submissions and feedback channels — for projects and organisations across South Australia and nationally, and we prepare the consultation reports that document the process for approval bodies.
What is a social licence to operate?: A social licence to operate is the ongoing acceptance a community grants an organisation or project. It is earned through genuine engagement, kept commitments and visible local benefit, it requires active maintenance over the life of a project, and it can be withdrawn when trust breaks down.
Where are you based, and where do you work?: Our head office is in Adelaide, South Australia. We deliver stakeholder engagement across Australia — our case work spans South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory — and our team includes a former Northern Territory Minister with extensive experience across remote communities, multicultural sectors and complex stakeholder environments.
How do we get started?: We start with a stakeholder mapping session: a working meeting where we map your stakeholder landscape, identify the risks, and outline the engagement approach your project needs, before you commit to a larger program.

18 published case studies Adelaide-based, working nationally

Start with a stakeholder mapping session

Bring us your project. In one working session we will map who matters, where the risk sits, and what your engagement plan needs to cover.

Book a stakeholder mapping session