Communication with public stakeholders on the femern link project in Germany

Abstract

In the past big construction projects in Germany lead to conflicts with the public community. During the process of approving the permission for construction these conflicts caused long delays as well as a raise in costs.

The femern link including the construction of 97 km of high-speed railways in north Germany in one of the biggest construction projects in europa in planing.

To avoid conflicts with public stakeholders the german federal ministry of transportation and the Deutsche Bahn, both stakeholders with financier interests, invented new ways of involving opponents. As in earlier project public opponents had been something to let layers take care about, the newest way of dealing with opponents is to involve and listen to them in order to find a compromise.

So called dialog forums were established.