NIRAS often creates policies and strategies, and we help our customers implement them. Strategic analyses constitute an important part of the preparatory work of policy making. Expert knowledge, dialogue and cross-disciplinarity are our trademarks, and we are used to providing qualified consultancy assistance to politically-led systems.
The physical framework and the use of it must always be seen in connection with what, e.g., the municipality wants to do and achieve in the long term. It requires a careful and professional design of the process in respect of wishes and visions. Public participation is therefore central in our strategic work, and we draw on our comprehensive experience and a broad selection of good practical process tools.
A typical process comprises interviews with politicians and stakeholders, vision/idea seminar, theme meeting in the political committee, public participation such as public meetings or Internet hearing, town council discussion and final decisions. We participate in the entire process; sometimes as impartial interviewers, seminar leaders and professional speakers; other times as those who produce presentations and contents for the public servants.
We also contribute to the graphic and linguistic dissemination of the policy. We take the municipality’s wishes and possible design line as our starting point, or we draw up an independent graphic expression.