Why Access Requires More Than Permissions, Partnerships, or PR

It’s always the same story

The plan is sound. The logistics are aligned. The community relations team is confident. The route is known. And then it isn’t.

A bridge is blocked. A meeting is cancelled. A crowd gathers. A rumour spreads. Suddenly, field access collapses and the entire operation stalls.

And while everyone is surprised, the field team isn’t. Because the warning signs were there. But they weren’t tracked, they weren’t managed, and they weren’t understood as part of a system.

Most failures in the field are access failures

In fragile or contested environments, access is not a given. It is not guaranteed by a permit, a community meeting, or a signed agreement. It’s a living, dynamic condition; one that must be understood, monitored, and actively sustained.

Access is the operational state of being able to do the work you set out to do — legally, safely, socially tolerated, and logistically viable.

If any part of that state weakens or fails, delivery becomes compromised; sometimes subtly, sometimes catastrophically.

“We’ve got good community relations” — until you don’t

One of the most common, and dangerous assumptions is that strong stakeholder relationships translate into stable access. They don’t, necessarily.

Projects often point to long-standing engagement, local hiring, or visible goodwill as evidence that their “social licence” is intact. But field history tells a different story: disruption, opposition, or reputational fallout often follow periods of visible harmony. Not because engagement failed but because it was incomplete.

The role of Acceptance: from goodwill to operational position

Access risk isn’t just about who you’ve engaged — it’s about how your presence is currently positioned.

We use the term Acceptance to describe this: a stakeholder’s operational posture toward your team or activity. It’s not a feeling. It’s not trust. It’s not what’s said in meetings. It’s a position… and it shifts.

Acceptance ranges from hostility to tolerance to active support. It’s rarely uniform, and never static. And crucially, it doesn’t always correlate with what’s said in public or recorded in meeting notes.

Understanding Acceptance is not a fix-all but it’s a vital signal. If you don’t monitor it, you’re flying blind. If you do, you start to see disruption risks forming before they materialise.

This insight is not new. The humanitarian sector has long used Acceptance as a foundational element of field security and movement strategies. It’s time infrastructure, energy, and exploration sectors did the same.

Conflict sensitivity: why even good engagement can’t always save you

Even strong engagement doesn’t eliminate access risk, especially in conflict-affected or politically sensitive environments.

Sometimes, your project creates pressure unintentionally:

By altering the perceived value of land, jobs, or resources
By unintentionally favouring one group over another
By triggering intra- or inter-community tensions around benefits

Other times, the risk is external to your operation:

A political shift
A partner’s behaviour elsewhere
A reputational issue from another actor being projected onto you

The result is the same: access erodes. Not because of failure in engagement, but because the context evolved and you didn’t see it clearly, or soon enough.

That’s why conflict sensitivity and Acceptance tracking go hand in hand. You need to know how you’re positioned, and how that position is changing.

A better structure: The Access Engagement Cycle

You can’t control every factor — but you can structure how your team understands and responds to them.

That’s why we use the term Access Engagement Cycle, adapted from the foundational work of Luc Zandvliet (PDAC). While the concept draws on well-established field experience, we use it here as an operating rhythm: a practical lens that reflects the cyclical nature of project access.

It won’t guarantee stability but it gives you the framework in which to do the basics well, consistently.

The cycle has four key phases:

Before You Go – Context shapes outcomes. Map stakeholders, power dynamics, and latent risks before entry.
When You Arrive – First contact sets tone. Missteps early on can lock in access fragility.
While You Operate – Monitor shifts in acceptance. Build engagement into your operating rhythm.
When You Leave – Exit shapes your legacy. It determines re-entry prospects and reputational capital.

Don’t wait for disruption to tell you what you missed

Access isn’t something you earn once — it’s something you sustain through attention, structure, and response. Projects that treat it as a background condition often find themselves blindsided. Those that manage it as a dynamic, operational risk are far better equipped to stay in the field, even as conditions shift.

The Engagement Cycle gives you the rhythm. Acceptance gives you the signal. What matters next is whether your team is paying attention.

Coming this month: the first Access Essentials module

To help teams put this into practice, we’re releasing the first in our training series:

The Access Engagement Cycle - a short, structured introduction to the four-phase model

25 minutes, self-paced
With quiz, implementation guide, and use-case references
Built for field leaders, project teams, and NGO operators

This isn’t a communications tool. It’s an operational one.

You Can’t Deliver What You Can’t Reach