Introduction

This chapter draws on theories of the social construction of technology to present a methodology aimed at enabling the better understanding, and hence management, of the definition of the project mission that explicitly addresses the inherently politicized nature of decision-making at this stage of the project life cycle. It therefore offers a complement to the better-known capital budgeting and cost-benefit analysis techniques that are frequently deployed to aid project scope definition. Through the presentation of three case studies of major construction projects, it presents two tools the stakeholder map and the power/interest matrix as tools for facilitating the more rigorous analysis of potential threats to the project arising from stakeholder activities. The three case studies are the development of farming in southern Egypt, the rebuilding of the Beirut, Lebanon central district following fifteen years of civil war, and the rebuilding of Montserrat in the West Indies following a devastating volcanic eruption.

The management of project stakeholders is a task of growing importance for project managers (Calvert 1995). Understanding their interests and relative power is vital for the effective management of the inception stages of many projects as the scope is defined. This chapter will build on research that developed an innovative stakeholder mapping approach to understand the management of Denmark's Storeb aelt project, which linked Zealand to the European mainland for the first time. The model maps stakeholders in terms of problems, solutions, and artifacts and then...