Political Risk Does Not Stand Still

There is another lesson that is particularly important: Political risk does not stand still. A project can begin in a favorable environment and face a very different one two years later.

Project specifications change. Infrastructure requirements become clearer. Utility proceedings make headway. Elections change decision makers. New stakeholders become involved. Media coverage increases public awareness. What happens with one project can also shape how communities and public officials perceive the next one.

This means a development can be technically sophisticated, well financed and commercially advanced while remaining politically underdeveloped.

We also tend to view regulation as the beginning of a political problem. Often, it is the result of one. New regulations, moratoriums, permitting changes and other government responses frequently follow a period during which public concerns have been building long before they prompt formal government action.

This makes the political environment surrounding a project as important to understand as the eventual regulatory response. A project can satisfy its technical requirements yet still struggle if it has not established political and community viability. Regulatory compliance and political acceptance are not the same thing.

Like financing, permitting, engineering and construction, political and stakeholder assessment needs to be revisited as the project develops, not just completed once and then put on a shelf.

Data Centers Are Showing Us What This Looks Like

Few industries demonstrate this shift more clearly right now than data centers. The extraordinary growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is driving enormous investment in digital infrastructure across the country, while the public conversation about that investment has become much broader.

Data center proposals are discussed not only in terms of investment, construction jobs and tax revenue but also in terms of electricity affordability, water and land use, workforce capacity, environmental impacts and the infrastructure required to serve them. Communities and policymakers are asking more detailed questions about who benefits, who bears the costs, what commitments will be made and what happens over the lifetime of a project.

These questions don’t necessarily signal hostility toward investment. They reflect something more important for our profession: that communities often evaluate major projects through a broader lens than developers do during initial site assessments.

Data centers underscore the global scale of this rapidly growing industry, which represents some of the largest companies and involves individual development decisions worth billions of dollars. Yet every facility must be built in a specific community. While the developer may view a location as one asset in a national portfolio, the community experiences it as something happening directly in their backyard.

This distinction matters. A billion-dollar investment does not make infrastructure concerns disappear. A sophisticated power strategy does not automatically reassure residents concerned about electricity rates. Employment projections carry less weight if communities cannot see a credible pathway linking local workers to those opportunities.

This is where public affairs can add considerable value. Our job should not be limited to explaining the logic of the project to the community. We should bring what we learn from communities, government, labor and other stakeholders back into the development process. That feedback can lead to better infrastructure commitments, stronger workforce partnerships and, ultimately, better projects.

This Is Bigger Than Data Centers

While data centers are the most visible example right now, they are not the only one. These same dynamics extend across industries including advanced manufacturing, energy, transmission infrastructure, logistics, housing, healthcare and other major development projects.

Traditional due diligence on zoning, permitting, utilities, transportation, labor markets, incentives, environmental conditions and financing remains essential, but it no longer tells the whole story. Project readiness increasingly includes political context, community history, stakeholder relationships, workforce dynamics and an understanding of public perception about an investment’s potential benefits and impacts.

This also means lobbying is only one part of the job. Government affairs, strategic communications, stakeholder engagement, workforce strategy and community relations are more effective when they inform one another and begin before controversy rather than in response to it.

Public Affairs Belongs at the Beginning

This is not about manufacturing support or creating better messages to achieve a predetermined outcome. It is about understanding political and community realities early enough to make better decisions. That project intelligence may confirm that a project is well positioned, identify commitments or relationships that need to be developed or suggest that a project should be redesigned or take a different approach. Occasionally, it may tell an organization that the best site on paper may not actually be the best place to build.

Over time, I have come to view public affairs differently in the context of major investments. Technical feasibility determines whether a project can be built, while political and community viability determines where it will be built, how long it will take and what it will cost to get there.

For organizations investing millions — and sometimes billions — of dollars in physical infrastructure, public affairs should not be an afterthought to major decisions. It should be part of the infrastructure from the start.