The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission hired HDR and EHI to transform how the agency engages with its communities and stakeholders. The result: modern tools, standardized communications, and improved capacity to conduct transparent, consistent, and data-informed community engagement across the Turnpike’s statewide initiatives.

EHI’s first step was finding out what wasn’t working. Our team designed and facilitated a series of focus groups with community stakeholders to understand public expectations and communication needs, then synthesized the findings into a comprehensive report with clear, actionable recommendations for enhancing the Turnpike’s engagement approach.

Then we built the data foundation. After surveying PA Turnpike project managers to understand which community analytics they actually use, EHI collaborated with the Turnpike’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion to expand the agency’s demographic dashboard into a comprehensive Community Analytics Dashboard — an interactive tool that puts demographic, geographic, and engagement-related data for every community along the Turnpike at project managers’ fingertips. EHI authored a practical guidebook to match, with step-by-step guidance on using community analytics to shape engagement decisions.

Tools only matter if people know how to use them. EHI led a hybrid training workshop covering engagement best practices, dashboard navigation, and hands-on exercises with sample data — equipping project managers to independently integrate analytics into their project planning. EHI also supported the migration of existing project webpages into a new, streamlined template that improves consistency, accessibility, and ease of use for the public.

The best engagement consultants don’t just do the work — they make their clients better at doing it. That’s what EHI delivered: a PA Turnpike engagement practice that’s more transparent, more consistent, and built to outlast the project.