What I find particularly appealing about the way you managed this was that first there was a lot of planning involved in consultation. There's an old axiom: to fail to plan is to plan to fail, so plan the work and work the plan. That's the English version, anyway.
I am impressed, and I just wondered.... When you engaged the community, it was time-consuming working with volunteers—I heard a little bit of frustration there—in organizing their availability and time, and especially, probably, with some of the professionals with heavy equipment and so on, who all have schedules.
But it seems to me that you had tremendous community buy-in. In other words, they have ownership of the project right throughout the community, and pride of ownership. I think there's something tremendously value-added through that approach, as painful as it would be. Would you verify that experience?