ANALYSIS OF STAKEHOLDERS INFLUENCE ON

CONSTRUCTION PROCESSES USING SOCIAL

NETWORK ANALYSIS

Essam Almahmoud
1
and Hemanta Doloi
2


1
Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010,
Australia
2
Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010,
Australia


ABSTRACT
Involvement of multitude of stakeholders in modern construction projects require
innovative management approaches for optimising decision making and achieving
success. Role based decision evaluation and hierarchical decision making are two key
requirements for seamless synchronization of construction supply chain and avoid
potential conflicts. Understanding of the roles of the individual actors and the
organisations involved is fundamentally important for making effective decisions at
an appropriate level in construction supply chain. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is
one of the useful methodologies that is able to reflect the roles of the individuals by
relating networks to specific functions within the project. In order for understand the
relative influence of stakeholders on construction processes over project development
phases, a holistic social network of the entire stakeholders groups associated with
project development and operational environments must be developed. Adopting the
Social Network Analysis (SNA) methodology, this research aims to firstly, identify
all the underlying stakeholders according to their roles in the project and secondly,
demonstrate how clusters of decisions can be processed at an appropriate level by
reflecting the situation in practice within the project. A case study has been used to
demonstrate the applicability of the SNA approach for supporting objective decision
making over project lifecycle.
Keywords: Construction Project, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Stakeholders
Analysis.
INTRODUCTION
Role based decision evaluation and hierarchical decision making are two key
requirements for seamless synchronization of construction supply chain and avoid
potential conflicts. While the traditional project delivery approaches such as critical
path analysis is still widely used for sequencing the project activities, these
approaches neither reflect the roles of individual actors nor take into consideration of
interfaces between the project organisations and their specific roles in the project.

1
[email protected]
2
[email protected]
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Understanding of the roles of the individual actors and the organisations involved is
fundamentally important for making effective decisions at an appropriate level in
construction supply chain.
Construction projects involve multitude of stakeholders working in coordination
through sequential processes to deliver the project. The complexity of construction
process requires a high level of coordination among all the stakeholders from
designing through the whole supply chain till the project is completed. The
stakeholders roles involved in typical construction project are project manager, head
contractor, site manager, senior planner, sub-contractors, project engineer,
consultants, department manager, owner, partner architect, partner quantity surveyor,
workforce and safety officer. However, different type of contracts and the level of
project complexity may affect the number of roles involved and their communication
structure. The coordination in the construction process takes the form of
communicating the process information. As the project progresses, the
communication and the information distribution channels change hands among the
actors or parties. While an actor is predominant in a process, it becomes less dominant
in other. For example, architect plays predominant role on the design management
process and less dominant in the general oversight process. The influence of the actor
has been found to be highly correlated with communication and coordination
(Hossain 2009). Construction processes are conducted sequentially and concurrently
sometimes, which adds more complex communications between the actors. The
communication between actors is dynamic which takes different shapes and channels
in each process. Therefore, the traditional top down approach for communication and
coordination that follows the hierarchical structure of the construction organisation
not necessarily to provide the best outcomes within construction projects.
Moreover, the delivery of construction project requires temporary multi organisations
interactions where sometimes actors within these organisations have no previous
experience on working together. The process of the construction and the flow of the
information between the actors are not compatible with the hierarchical structure of
the organisations. Rather dynamic network structure of communication between the
different actors having many adjacent nodes will potentially boost the construction
process. According to Hossain (2009), people in reality tend to communicate through
the dynamic network structures instead of the formal hierarchy. Therefore
understanding the underlying shadow networks enables the use of these networks for
the project delivery processes.
This study is conducted firstly, to understand the complex interactions of construction
stakeholders in relation the involvement in construction processes, and secondly, to
investigate how the roles of the stakeholders within the project affect or influence the
successful completion of the construction processes in the project delivery context.
Thus the key research questions include:
How the stakeholders communicate with each other with respect to construction
processes?
Who plays the most predominant role in each construction process in a relative
term?
Whose role has the largest influence on the others and on the construction
process?
Which construction process has the largest influence on the stakeholders
relationships?

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The Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach adopted in this research is consider
highly efficient in understanding the complex process networks and the stakeholders
interactions (Halinen and Trnroos 2005; de Blois, Herazo-Cueto et al. 2011). Based
on a thorough literature review and a typical construction project in Melbourne, total
of seventeen construction processes and thirteen key roles of stakeholders have been
defined associated with the delivery of a typical construction project. The interactions
of the stakeholders with respect of each process have been mapped using NetMiner 4
package to perform the analysis of their social networks.

BACKGROUND REVIEW
De Blois, Herazo-Cueto et al (2011) analysed three construction case studies to
understand the structure and the mechanism of communication and coordination of
temporary multi organisations involved. The study revealed that the structure of these
organisations, as it derived from the procurement strategy, does not reflect the real
relation between them. Rather, an informal un-hierarchical communication exists that
influence the structure of the communications. The researchers emphasise the need
for further research on dynamic structure on construction projects that reflect the
structure of communication evolving through the project phases. Hossain (2009)
investigated the relationship between social structure on coordination using the
process action approach. The study revealed that centrality measure had a profound
effect on coordination, as well as, the influence of a stakeholder is highly correlated
with coordination more than the prominence of the stakeholder. Prell, Hubacek et al
(2009) utilised social network analysis to inform stakeholder analysis in the context of
national resource management. It was reported that the stakeholders categorization
method often overlooked the importance of the stakeholders communication.
However, SNA helps to identify which individuals and categories of stakeholders
played more central role in the network and which were more peripheral. Chung and
Hossain (2009) conducted a study to examine the effect of social network position,
structure, and ties on the performance of knowledge- intensive workgroup. The study
revealed that social network structure and position are important for individuals
performances. The study also shows that degree centrality is positively influence of
the actors.
The above selected literature clearly highlights the importance of network based roles
of stakeholders and underlying influences in effective delivery of construction
processes within projects. The traditional approach of hierarchical communication and
responsibility sharing among the stakeholders following do not rationalise the
efficient work practices in delivering construction projects. Linking the network
positioning of the stakeholders with delegation of responsibility, this research aims to
provide a rationalised approach for promoting transparency, accountability and
efficiency among professionals within the construction industry.

PROJECT BASED RESPONSIBILITY AND THE NETWORK
The quality of conducting construction processes is affected by many factors, such as
skills, experience, technology availability, education, knowledge and so on. Most of
these factors are highly influenced by the individuals abilities to obtaining the right
source of information that helps to accomplish the task within the time required. The
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expertise have to be managed and coordinated in order to deliver the expectations
(Chung and Hossain 2009). In order to match the professional responsibilities of
individuals with underlying construction processes, adequate understanding on the
information flow between the professional roles across time-phased processes is quite
crucial. Reliability of the data source, data collection mechanism and sample of
respondents play a significant role in the success of such analysis.
In order to demonstration the research methodology put forward in this paper,
relevant data on professional roles and processes were collected on a medium size
(contract sum is less than $100 million Australian Dollar) building project. Semi
structured interview and expert opinions were the key mechanisms for collecting the
information on interactions between the practice roles (stakeholders) and processes at
an early construction phase in the project. Table 1 and Table 2 show the construction
processes and role of stakeholders in the project respectively. A Likert scale from 1-
5, has been used to measure the interaction based on the channels of information
distribution along the construction processes. Each stakeholder was asked to indicate
the level of communication with the other stakeholders in regard to each construction
process. Score of five means there is high level of communication so high level of
dependence between the two actors to perform a process, while zero means there is no
need for communication. The recorded interactions are thus primarily between the
stakeholders in relation to the construction processes.
Table 1 Construction process
ID Construction Process ID Construction Process
P1 Site management P10 Construction planning
P2 Design management P11 General oversight
P3 Quantity estimation P12 Progress monitoring
P4 Quality planning and control P13 Contract and documentations
P5 Safety and risks management P14 Engineering
P6 Cost control P15 Architecture
P7 Scope delivery P16 Material supply and storage
P8 Services and utilities P17 Approval
P9 Project management

Table 2 Role of Stakeholders
ID Stakeholder ID Stakeholder
R1 Owner R8 Project manager
R2 Consultants R9 Partner architect
R3 Head contractor R10 Partner quantity surveyor
R4 Project engineer R11 Safety officer
R5 Department manager R12 Site manager
R6 Workforce R13 Sub-contractors
R7 Senior planner

SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS (SNA)
SNA implies system approach for constructing the relationship patterns between
actors rather than identifying individual attributes of each entity (de Blois, Herazo-
Cueto et al. 2011). It is becoming increasingly popular methodology for

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understanding and mapping the complex patterns of actors interactions within a
network system. Degree of centrality is the sum of direct ties to other actors in a
network. In a social network centrality has been defined by leading social network
researcher as a measurement of importance, prominence and influence of actor in a
network (Freeman 1979; Borgatti, J ones et al. 1998; Hossain 2009). Strong and
extensive ties to other nodes in the network indicate that the one stakeholder is more
likely to influence others with respect to a project environment, thus more important
(central) in the network (Prell, Hubacek et al. 2009). Therefore, stakeholder who is
communicated for providing information to conducting the construction process is
more likely to influence others and become central in the network.
Data analysis
The interactions of the stakeholders with respect of each process have been mapped
using NetMiner 4 package to drive the analysis of their social network. It is
worthwhile to mention that the construction processes are generally conducted by
teamwork that coordinates through communication of process information. Therefore,
different shape of network appears in each construction process which reflects the
communications between actors. Ties within the network represent the
communication channels between actors. A tie links no more than two actors which is
human to human communication. Strong tie represents there is high level of
communication between the actors. For each construction process, a network map was
constructed so there were seventeen different forms of networks. One of seventeen
examples (with seventeen identified processes in Table 1) of these communication
networks is shown in Figure 1 during the construction management process. Most of
the stakeholders appeared connected in the all networks as having role to play in the
process even if it is very basic.

Degree of centrality was evaluated to measure the importance of a stakeholder in each
construction process. Then the degree of centrality scores were normalised so a
comparison between the stakeholders and identification of their responsibilities for
each process can be attained. Figure 2 shows the index of stakeholders
responsibilities associated over seventeen construction processes.

Figure 1 Stakeholders interaction during design management process

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As seen in Figure 2, the project manager mostly plays the predominate role in each
process. This is because the project manager communicates with most stakeholders
for providing the required information to perform the process. However, with regard
to P5 safety and risks management process, the project manager, the safety officer and
the site manger have the same level of responsibilities which requires high level of
communication in this process. This is reflected in Table 4 Eigenvector centrality
where P5 becomes the second top process that influences the success of the project.
In addition, Figure 2 shows that the owner has less communication channels with
other stakeholders in the most construction processes. This is due the fact that owner
does not communicate with many stakeholders of construction process but just a few
key players required to communicate when the construction proceeds. Nonetheless,
this does not mean the owners influence in the project is peripheral but his/her
involvement in the construction process and the information he/ she holds are less
needed in the most construction processes. In the P2 design management process the
owner involvement is higher than the other process because the communication with
the architect and approval required from the owner.
0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
0.1
0.12
0.14
0.16
P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P11 P12 P13 P14 P15 P16 P17
Owner
Consultants
Head contractor
Project engineer
Department manager
Workforce
Senior planner
Project manager
Partner architect
Partner quantity surveyor
Safety officer
Site manager
Sub-contractors
Figure 2 Distribution of the stakeholders in responsibilities index with respect to project
processes
Table 3 shows the Eigenvector centrality of the stakeholders on the whole
construction processes. The Eigenvector centrality is defined as the principal
eigenvector of the adjacency matrix of a graph (Borgatti and Everett 1997). In the
Eigenvector centrality measure, higher score signifies the more pivotal roles of the
stakeholder in overall construction processes and vice-versa.
Table 3 Stakeholders Eigenvector centrality
Stakeholders
Eigenvector
Centrality Stakeholders
Eigenvector
Centrality
Owner 0.110682 Project manager 0.381598
Consultants 0.274473 Partner architect 0.152132
Head contractor 0.366333 Partner quantity surveyor 0.256404
Project engineer 0.346006 Safety officer 0.266012
Department manager 0.223807 Site manager 0.34544
Workforce 0.217028 Sub-contractors 0.257682
Senior planner 0.265155

Thus the use of Eigenvector enables ranking the stakeholders with respect to their
level of interactions in each process. As can be seen in the Table 3 the Project
manager Head contractor, Project engineer and Site manager are respectively the most

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predominant players in the construction project delivery. Their roles are very
important as many stakeholders dependent on the information and communication
they provide. On the other hand, the owner and partner architect as can be seen in
Table 3 has the least Eigenvector centrality in the processes network. This is as
explained earlier due to their role in the project do not require large interactions and
communications. The partner architect and the owner communicate with key players
in the project as main communication channels to diffuse the information they hold.
Table 4 Construction process Eigenvector
Construction process
Eigenvector
Centrality
Construction
process Eigenvector Centrality
P1 0.240158 P10 0.244102
P2 0.23133 P11 0.24699
P3 0.240222 P12 0.24692
P4 0.241386 P13 0.242871
P5 0.24807 P14 0.244747
P6 0.239074 P15 0.239238
P7 0.237805 P16 0.248437
P8 0.244513 P17 0.244668
P9 0.241949


Figure 4 2-mode network of the interactions between stakeholders and the construction
processes
Table 4 shows the Eigenvector centrality of the construction processes where higher
scores represent the importance of processes in relation to the others in the project.
As it can be seen from the Table 4, P16 Material supply and storage, P5 Safety and
risks management, and P11 General oversights are respectively the most influencing
processes. The interactions of the construction actors are very high in these processes.
Huge volume of information and communication disseminated in order to perform
these processes efficiently. Therefore, these processes are considered critical for the
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project success. Figure 4 shows 2-mode network of the interactions between
stakeholders and the construction processes. The size of the node represents the
number of ties linked to the node. Among the thirteen professional roles (in Table 2),
head contractor (R3), project manager (R8), site manager (R12), project engineer
(R4), safety officer (R11), site manager (R12), partner quantity surveyor (R10) and
consultants (R2) are the most densely communicated roles with high level of
interactions during construction processes. These roles are represented by bigger red
circles in the network map.
CONCLUSIONS
The paper has put forward a new approach for linking the network based roles of the
stakeholders with the construction processes in the delivery phase of projects. Based
on a building construction project, a holistic social network of the entire stakeholders
groups associated with project development environment is developed. Social
Network Analysis (SNA) methodology has been adopted to investigate the dyadic ties
between seventeen construction processes and thirteen professional roles within the
project. Eigenvalue centralities are used to highlight the significance of the
construction processes and the roles associate with level of communications,
information and responsibility sharing within the project. Among the seventeen key
construction processes, material supply and storage, safety and risks management, and
general oversights respectively are found the most influencing processes. Among the
thirteen stakeholders roles, head contractor, project manager and site manager were
found to be highly influencing in successful delivery of the project. The findings
clearly demonstrate how clusters of decisions can be processed at an appropriate level
by reflecting the situation in practice within the project.
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