We offer a comprehensive menu of services and tools

Public Meeting Facilitation
As an impartial third party we can facilitate discussion around sensitive issues and achieve public buy-in. Community engagement exercises can also be used to establish program or project scope and priorities.

Project Charrette Services
A charrette is the process of design-sketching the ideas of a creative team. It’s a highly collaborative, intense effort to solve any planning or architectural problem within a limited time. Instead of an architect taking ideas and plans and going away to develop them on his or her own, a charrette allows for the dynamic participation of critical stakeholders and designers. It promotes instant communication and facilitates many points of view, resulting in a well-rounded, realistic, creative proposal.

Upon engagement, p3 will meet with you to determine:

• Scope of the project
• Scope of the issues
• Potential size of the charrette
• Ideal primary and secondary stakeholders
• Appropriate duration of the charrette
• Scope of the deliverables beyond design and facilitation of the charrette process; these will include final schematic drawings and a comprehensive report.

Comprehensive Planning Services
City comprehensive plans historically have had a dull 20-year shelf life. Many forward-thinking cities have narrowed their focus to a 10-year period. Using the Community Capitals model, p3 guides local planning commissions through a robust process to see the landscape, engage citizens, identify priorities, build consensus and create a planning roadmap with objectives and critical next-step strategies.

Municipal Meeting Facilitation
Prior to the comprehensive planning exercise, a municipality may wish to engage a meeting facilitator to help the city generate and coalesce ideas about community-based programs, including capital improvement projects. This is also an opportunity to identify areas of public concern or interest, and flesh out new ideas.

Cities with a 10-year comprehensive plan typically work to freshen goals and objectives every five years. p3 guides local planning commissions through public engagement exercises to achieve this, while also strategizing with the public on how to most effectively fulfill plan objectives.

Municipal Project Programming
Requests for proposals (RFPs) in cities with no staff are often generated from boilerplate models shared between smaller communities. Drawing from our expertise in architecture, relationships with consulting engineers and knowledge of public engagement, p3 can help these smaller municipalities or rural areas more accurately target needs and assets to generate scopes specifically addressing their communities.

Community Assessment Evaluations
Prior to comprehensive planning exercises, capital improvement project prioritization and general annual goal setting, communities often require assessment evaluations to uncover all needs and desires among their constituency. Using a variety of models, approaches and techniques (SWOT, Appreciative Inquiry, PhotoVoice, etc.) we can offer moderated focus groups, independent demographic research and focused polling and questionnaires, and compile existing data into a new format. These assessments are best organized by the Community Capitals Framework model.

Community Surveys/Polls/Questionnaires
Design and implementation of surveys, polls and questionnaires are vital in gaining insight into community priorities. These small tools can help prioritize community dollars and help us gather information on sentiment, mood, direction and focus. For smaller communities, they act as a more reasonable resource than donut shoptalk. These tools can also act as statistically relevant data for critical evaluation.

Stand-in Community Planning Administrator
p3 can serve as planning administrator for communities without staff or budget to hire a full-time person. We assume responsibility for monthly meetings and preparing reports using solid comprehensive planning and Smart Growth principles.

Proven to uncover needs, see potential and equip leadership

These are all opportunities for community development. The first, orange group invites pragmatic solutions that produce tangible products and results. The second, burgundy group requires considerable investment of time and resource; p3 is present in this environment to help communities dream dreams, build consensus and employ proven processes that lead stakeholders successfully across an uncertain landscape to a solid vision for health, sustainability and prosperity. A collateral benefit, community development efforts can help identify leadership potential, and encourage, strengthen and revitalize existing leaders.