Major bridge lift A14 Improvement Scheme

Project Description

Challenge:

On a short 6-week commission and a tight brief, I supported the Stakeholder Director on the A14 project with a major road closure and major engineering project to install a bridge over the A14.  The project involved closing the A14, a major A road, diverting traffic and making sure that the public could understand why this was happening, and ultimately mitigate negative press against the actual road closure itself.

Approach:

Make it super interesting! I worked alongside the stakeholder managers and wider communications team and we created a plan of face-2-face meetings and printed materials that would be delivered to all households and businesses and other key stakeholders in the local area. I took a ‘storytelling approach’ to content and gathered facts about the bridge and why this was a unique one-off engineering feat that would take place over 48 hours and the road closure was the safest way to make this happen smoothly and with the least disruption.

I created informative social and online media content campaign that was ‘drip-fed’ in the days running up to the event to prepare people for the major disruption.

This included storyboarding out video content for social and creating a social media planner for the intensive 24-hour work period and the 3-week period covering pre and post communication phases, making sure that we could get the video up and running as soon as the event had happened and the road was open again as well as pre-planning for media ops and listing out all the photos to be taken for media and briefing the film and production team.  I briefing media, working with the Highways England press office, with video clips and making sure there was a viewing platform for them as soon as the event had finished.

Results:

20k views of the teaser videos on FB page and 54 shares.  54k views of the final video and  50 shares plus almost 100% positive sentiment and only a few mentions of the actual road closure itself.

Project Details

Skills Needed:

  • Content development
  • Digital Engagement
  • Media Relations
  • Stakeholder Engagement

Categories:

  • Communications Management
  • Digital Engagement
  • Public Relations