Research: Factors that contribute to the success of external stakeholder management in construction

A  recent research project  (Oppong, Chan, Ameyaw and Frimpong, 2021) evaluated the factors that contribute to the success of external stakeholder management at the project planning stage for construction projects. The research was conducted with project management practitioners in Ghana and analyzed using fuzzy synthetic evaluation, factor analysis and mean scoring.

Success Factors for Construction Projects

It’s not surprising that the study found that involving external stakeholders in decision-making received the highest rank for factors that contribute to success of the project. Effective communication with external stakeholders was the highest individual contributor to success.

In descending order of contribution:

Tips to Boost the Success of Infrastructure Projects

As a stakeholder engagement manager on a construction project, how can you leverage the research findings to boost your success? Here are some tips and resources:

• Conduct robust stakeholder analysis. This is an important step that is often missed, especially on infrastructure projects. Stakeholder engagement on infrastructure projects is often reactive rather than proactive, and stakeholder analysis will give you a great strategic framework for setting up engagement plans that are targeted and more likely to succeed.

• Review your Stakeholder Engagement Plans to ensure that they reflect the needs and priorities of all stakeholders. Have a look at our guide to an easy, implementable and strategic stakeholder management plan

• Take a less transactional approach to stakeholder engagement and try and implement measures for developing and maintaining longer-term relationships. The infrastructure project will have a long-term “presence” in the community, long after your project is complete. What can you set up to ensure that the operators of the project can benefit from the engagement work you are doing at the planning and construction phases of the project?

• Evaluate your stakeholder management processes and outcomes. Our simple evaluation framework is easy to use and will give you a great starting benchmark that you can measure against as your project progresses through the various phases.

• Invest in stakeholder management software that helps you monitor your stakeholder relationships and engagement efforts in the context of the stakeholder analysis you have conducted – it’s no longer enough to just record transactional interactions with stakeholders, you need to focus on analysis and reporting that can help you build long term relationships, value and trust. If you’d like to learn more about how our software supports infrastructure projects to achieve this, book a meeting with one of our team members..

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