Investigating the actions required to effectively manage stakeholders in construction projects

Typically, construction projects are organised into a series of operations carried out by different individuals or organisations, referred to as stakeholders with varying degrees of engagement. Initiating, planning and finishing construction projects can become complex due to the interactions that occur between different parties and their associated influences. This paper utilises a secondary data analysis method to interpret data from multiple construction projects and suggests seven themes around which practitioners should base their stakeholder management processes, namely stakeholder influences and representation, stakeholder communication, stakeholder collaboration, stakeholder negotiations, risk management, project value to society, and project sustainability. Although some of these themes exist in other forms of literature surrounding the topic of stakeholder management on construction projects, there is a lack of research, which provides a relatively exhaustive framework consisting of a set of actions that can be adopted to maximise project success. This paper aims to fill this gap.