Stakeholders Analysis for Utility Relocation in Construction Project

Ying-Mei Cheng and Chi-Hsien Hou

Department of Civil Engineering and Hazard Mitigation Design, China University of Technology,

56 Hsing-Lung Road, Section 3, Taipei, 116, Taiwan

Keywords: Stakeholders, K-prototypes, Utility Relocation.

Abstract: Communication is a complicated task while executing utility relocation projects in developed city. The main

reason behind this is the number of stakeholders involved. This research tries to identify and classify the

stakeholders during the utility relocation projects through interviews with the experts, questionnaire and

clustering approach. First, 25 stakeholders and the 6 attributes, Power, Profit, Influence, Impact,

Legitimacy, and Urgency are identified from interviews with the experienced engineers. The questionnaire

is then developed based on the 6 attributes. The k-prototypes approach is adopted to analyze the results of

the questionnaires and classify these stakeholders. The project managers can customize their communication

techniques or choose suitable timing to involve the stakeholders with similar characteristics for each group

in order to promote communication efficiency, and reach the anticipated objective.

1 INTRODUCTION

Many researches have discussed stakeholders

management, analysis or mapping in recent years

(Smith et al., 2004; Bourne, 2005; Newcombe, 2010;

Jeffrey et al., 2010; Jing et al., 2011; etc.). All of

these researches emphasize that the stakeholders’

management influences the success of a project.

Construction projects are full of uncertainties and

risks because of the on-site condition, especially

when the construction project includes the relocation

of utility lines. Most of the utilities are buried

underground in Taipei, Taiwan, which entail the

water system, electricity, gas, sewage and so on, and

they each under a different jurisdiction with different

specialization. Communication among the different

stakeholders is complex and difficult. For this

reason, recognizing the stakeholders in utility

relocation project to improve communication among

them and ensure project success is the objective of

this research. This research tries to identify the

stakeholders and their attributes during the utility

relocation projects through interviews with the

experts. The attributes become the basis for the

questionnaires. The k-prototypes approach is then

applied to analyze the results of the questionnaires

and classify the stakeholders during utility

relocation.

2 STAKEHOLDERS

The concept of stakeholders was first raised by

Freeman in 1984. Freeman defines the stakeholder

as any group or individual who can affect or is

affected by the achievement of the organization's

objectives (Freeman, 1984). According to “A Guide

to the Project Management Body of Knowledge”

(PMI, 2008), project managers spend the majority of

their time communicating with team members and

other project stakeholders, whether they are internal

or external to the organization. PMI (2008) also

states that project stakeholders are individuals and

organizations that are actively involved in the

project or whose interests may be affected as a result

of project execution or project completion.

2.1 Stakeholders Recognition

Taipei is a fully developed city in Taiwan with

crowded population. Most of the infrastructures,

such as the electricity system, and gas utilities were

built decades ago. Thus, when a property owner

wants to build new infrastructure, communication

becomes a major issue for utility relocation. This

research will analyze the stakeholders during utility

relocation of the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit)

construction project, a classic example for utility

relocation in Taiwan. Generally, utilities involved in

322

Cheng Y. and Hou C..

Stakeholders Analysis for Utility Relocation in Construction Project.

DOI: 10.5220/0003989403220325

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2012), pages 322-325

ISBN: 978-989-8565-10-5

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

such project include Street Light, Sewage System,

Water System, Gas, Electricity, Telecommunication,

Signalization, Military Information and Storm

Drainage. Many jurisdictions and agencies are

involved. Different types of utilities also require

different expertise. This research utilizes the

engineers’ practical experiences to identify 25

stakeholders during the utility relocation project.

Table 1 shows how Taiwanese engineers typically

categorize the stakeholders:

Table 1: Stakeholders’ classification using practical

experiences.

Group 1 - Cable Pipeline Units

1 Taipower Power Supply Station

2 Taipower District Office

3 Chunghwa Telecom District Office

4 The Parks and Street Lights Office, Taipei City

Government

5 Traffic Engineering Office, Taipei City

Government

6 Network Transmission Squad of the Signal Group,

Army Corps

7 Fixed Line Companies

8 Telecommunication Companies

9 Cable Companies

Group 2 - Fluid Pipeline Units

1 Storm Drainage Section of the Hydraulic

Engineering Office, Public Works Department,

Taipei City Government

2 Sewage Systems Office, Public Works Department,

Taipei City Government

3 Engineering Division, Taipei Water Department

4 Taipei City Fire Department

5 Natural Gas Companies

Group 3 - Client

1 Client (Department of Rapid Transit Department,

TCG)

Group 4 - Contractors

1 Material Suppliers

2 Utility Contractors

Group 5 - Elected Representative & Law Enforcement

1 Local Traffic Police

2 Local Police

3 Local Borough Office

4 Local Representatives and Council Members

Group 6 - User

1 Local Community Management Center

2 Local Financial Sector

3 Local Businesses

4 Local Residents

2.2 Stakeholders Classification

Ronald (1997) identified 3 attributes: Power,

Legitimacy, and Urgency and use them to classify

the stakeholders into 7 groups – Dormant,

Discretionary, Demanding, Dominant, Dangerous,

Dependent, and Definitive. In his research, Power

means the ability of those who possess power to

bring about the outcomes they desire (Salancik and

Pfeifer, 1974). Legitimacy is a generalized

perception or assumption that the actions of an entity

are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some

socially constructed system of norms, values,

beliefs, and definitions (Suchman, 1995). Ronald

argued that Urgency is based on the time sensitivity

and the criticality, so they define urgency as the

degree to which stakeholder claims call for

immediate attention (Ronald, 1997). Newcombe

(2003) included the property developer, British Rail,

design practice, insurance company, general public,

contractor, users, and local authority as the key

stakeholders in the Swindon redevelopment project.

He applied the power/predictability matrix and the

power/interest matrix to classify the stakeholders

and analyze the stakeholders’ influence. Bourne

(2005) used the Stakeholder Circle methodology to

classify and prioritize stakeholders, develop

strategies and monitor effectiveness. Different from

the above mentioned researches which used

qualitative method or analysis software to classify

the stakeholders, this research tries to classify the

stakeholders by using the quantitative attributes or

characteristics of stakeholders.

3 METHODOLOGY

This research identifies the stakeholders of utility

relocation projects through interviews with the

experts. 25 stakeholders are first identified from the

interviews, and then 7 attributes, Power, Interest,

Influence, Impact, Legitimacy, Urgency, and

Public/Private sector are adopted to set up the

questionnaires. The 6 former attributes are numeric

data type. Power, Legitimacy, and Urgency are

defined in section 2.2. Interest refers to the

stakeholders’ level or concern regarding the project

outcomes. Influence is the stakeholders’ active

involvement in the project. Impact means the

stakeholders’ ability to affect changes to the

project’s planning or execution (PMI, 2008). The

last data is categorical data type, which represents

whether the stakeholders belong to the public or

private sector. Because the k-prototypes approach

StakeholdersAnalysisforUtilityRelocationinConstructionProject

323

can be applied toward mixed data type, it is adopted

in this research to analyze the results of the

questionnaires and classify the stakeholders during

utility relocation.

3.1 Questionnaire

The questionnaire is designed to get the attribute

value for each stakeholder. The questionnaire

assigns a seven-point Likert scale for the 6 attributes

of each of the 25 stakeholders, which will be

discussed later on. The “7” in the scale means the

highest, “6” means higher, “5” means high, “4”

means average, “3” means low, “2” means lower,

and “1” means the lowest. In order to achieve

objectivity and professional result, the members

need to have utility relocation related experience. In

addition, the recipients of the questionnaires are

from both public and private sectors, for example,

Department of Rapid Transit Systems, Sewage

Systems Office, Chunghwa Telecom, Water

Department, gas companies, contractors and so on.

There are 37 participants for this questionnaire,

including engineering staff or officials who have

participated in utility relocation related projects,

among which 14 has over 20 years of experience, 13

with 10 to 20 years of experience, 5 with 5 to 10

years, and 5 with 1 to 5 years.

3.2 K-prototypes Algorithm

The clustering algorithms have numerous scientific

and practical applications, such as in artificial

intelligence, pattern recognition, and medical

research. In general, it can be divided into various

categories based upon their principles and

algorithms. The traditional clustering methods

include the following: 1) Partitioning methods; 2)

Hierarchical methods; 3) Density-based methods;

and 4) Grid-based methods. The k-prototypes

algorithm is a type of Partitioning methods proposed

by Huang (1998). This algorithm provides a

straightforward approach to integrate the k-means

and k-modes algorithms to cluster mixed-data-type

objects. The objective function is defined as follows:

()

∑

PPQWP

(1)

in Equation (1),

()

∑∑

−=

jljili

qxwP

,,,

(2)

and

()

∑∑

=+=

jljili

qxwP

,,,

δγ

(3)

where W is an n

k partition matrix, Q = {Q

, Q

, … ,

} is a set of objects in the same object domain,

where 1

≤

k. Let X = {X

…, X

} be a set of n

objects. Object X

is represented as [x

i,1

, x

i,2

,…, x

i,m

where 1

≤

n, 1

≤

m. Equation (2) is the

squared Euclidean distance measure of the numeric

attributes and Equation (3) is the simple matching

dissimilarity measure of the categorical attributes.

The weight

is used to maintain a balance between

both data types. Interested readers are encouraged to

refer to Huang’s paper for details on this algorithm

(Huang, 1998).

4 ANALYSIS RESULT AND

DISCUSSION

This research used the questionnaires to assign

values to stakeholders’ 6 attributes with the addition

of whether the stakeholders are from public or

private sector, and the k-prototypes approach to

analyze the stakeholders. Based on Roland’s

classification result (Ronald, 1997), this research

uses 7 as the initial number of groups. The numbers

of each group is shown in Figure 1. Only 1

stakeholder (local community management center) is

classified under Group 1, so the researchers consider

that most of its attribute values are close to the

means of Group 6, it means the characteristics of

local community management center are similar to

those of Group 6, so it was combined with Group 6

into the new Group.

After the adjustment, table 2 shows the means of

each attribute in each group. Group 1 now includes

the Storm Drainage Section of Hydraulic

Engineering Office of Public Works Department and

Sewage Systems Office in Taipei City Government,

Sewage Systems Office of Public Works

Department in Taipei City Government, and client

(Department of Rapid Transit Department, TCG).

Group 2 includes the Parks and Street Lights Office

and Traffic Engineering Office of Taipei City

Government, Network Transmission Squad of the

Army Corps Signal Group, and Taipei City Fire

Department. Group 3 includes Taipower Power

Supply Station, Taipower District Offices,

Chunghwa Telecom District Offices, Engineering

Division of Taipei Water Department, and natural

gas companies. Group 4 includes the fixed line

companies, telecommunication companies, cable

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companies, and utility subcontractors. Group 5

includes local traffic police, local police stations,

local borough offices, and local representatives and

council members. Finally, Group 6 includes material

suppliers, local financial sector, local businesses,

local residents, and local community management

center. The classification results indicates that Group

3 has the highest values in power, profit, influence,

legitimacy, and urgency while Group 1 has the

second highest values in power, profit, influence,

legitimacy, urgency, and the highest value in impact.

Project managers need to pay more attention to the

stakeholders within these 2 groups.

Figure 1: The numbers of each group (Before adjustment).

Table 2: The means of attribute in each group.

1 2 3 4 5 6

Power 5.4234 4.7432 5.4541 4.7365 4.0676 3.6270

Interest 5.0180 4.5203 5.3568 4.8378 3.9662 4.3946

Influence 4.9459 4.6149 5.7027 4.5203 3.9122 3.8865

Impact 5.4955 4.1081 5.3459 4.1554 3.6149 3.6865

Legitimacy 5.3604 4.9730 5.4703 4.4122 3.6014 3.4865

Urgency 5.0090 4.8108 6.0595 4.5203 3.1081 3.3297

5 CONCLUSIONS

This research utilized questionnaire and k-prototypes

clustering approaches to classify the stakeholders for

utility relocation projects. Comparing with the

traditional classification method, which depends on

the engineers’ subjective opinions, this method

proposed objective and quantitative classification.

The authors first interviewed experienced engineers

to identify a list of 25 stakeholders, who are then

classified into 6 groups. Stakeholders in each group

are with similar characteristics. According to this

information, project managers can plan for

communication accordingly. For example, the

project team can seek advices from the group with

the highest attribute values early in the processes. In

conclusion, project managers/team can customize

their communication strategy for each group.

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Group

Attribute

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