The Sydney Airport is a very vital airport in context to the economy of Australia as it is very busy and important location in Australia with regards to doing business in Australia. The Sydney Airport is a flight station for the Qantas Airways and it is also a busy location offering back and forth services and connecting various important locations of the world. Given its popularity and huge economic benefit associated with it was very essential for the privatization of the Australian Airport Services as it will help in attracting more funds from private sector which will not only result in meeting the expectations of the passengers but will also help in increasing the benefits of the stakeholders in addition to benefitting local communities. From engineering aspect it is very necessary to construct a new runway in the Sydney Airport in order to meet the demands of the ever increasing number of flights and also to provide better landing and take-off options to the aircraft carriers with various new tyre technology with greater passenger capacity and therefore it has become very important to involve the stakeholders in order to gain knowledge, inputs and learn about the perception of the different group of stakeholders which would help in the success of the construction of the runway project.
It is very important to engage stakeholders and community partners in the development of Sydney airport as the involvement of the stakeholders are beneficial to the Sydney Airport Authority and also because they play an important role in influencing the interests and issues of the project undertaken by the authority. The authority is also of the perception that that the effective participation of the stakeholders in the planning and effective delivering of infrastructure will help in bringing out the best social, economic and environmental outcome. The Sydney Airport authority is one of the major airports in the country as it helps in governing a section of the Australian economy and therefore it needs to operate with a variety of organizations with different business models. The main aim of the Sydney Airport Authority is to provide maximum benefits to the passengers while also fulfilling the expectations of the stakeholders. The Sydney Airport Authority needed to undergo a change in business model in order to shift their focus from passenger benefit to passenger returns and maximizing stakeholder returns after the Australian Airport services got privatized in nature from being public services in nature. The privatization raised various issues in the Australian Airport services due to various reasons among which the main was increase in the price of the air services and accordingly the Sydney Airport was sold to Southern Cross Airports Corporation Holdings Limited in 2002 and it also employed majority of the Sydney workforce in 2009.
The stakeholders who are identified for engagement regarding the proposition of the new runway in the Sydney Airport includes the investors who exhibits significance influence and control the development and daily operations of the airport, the federal government of Australia and state government under which the airport belong as it controls the various border security issues, noise issues and various environmental aspects of the air transport industry and are also responsible for designing various legal laws, legislations, regulations and standards which the air transport industry needs to abide by, the airlines company who provides passenger facilitation and transport services in the airport, the private airport operator or authority who acts on behalf of the investors of the sir transport industry, oversees the day to day operations of the businesses and also provide the stakeholders of the airport what they require to operate within the complexity of the airport. The private airport operator or authority also aim in working in collaboration with the local communities as it is the communities that seems to have little gain from proximity to airport operations and perhaps much to lose in welfare and quality of life from the extra noise, traffic activity and air pollution which an airport generates. The other important stakeholder group which should be involved in stakeholder engagement process are the communities surrounding the airport as they get affected the most doe to the operations of the airport and also because they voice their concern over undesirable social effects of the operations of the airport and accepts various desirable effects such as working opportunities.
As stated by Mcallister, Oyedele & Kelly (2013) stakeholder mapping is the second step in the five step approach of stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder mapping of stakeholders is considered as very important in stakeholder engagement process as it helps in understanding that the key stakeholders of a project or initiative are and what those stakeholders are looking for in the project. In order to make stakeholder mapping more effective in nature, it should be driven by an engagement strategy.
Stakeholder Mapping is a collective process of research, debate and discussion which draws from multiple perspectives in order to identify and determine a key list of stakeholders across the entire stakeholder spectrum. The process of stakeholder mapping can be divided in to the following phases namely identifying which involves listing the relevant groups, organizations, and people involved in a particular initiative or project, analysing which involves understanding the relevant perspectives and view point of the stakeholders identified, mapping which helps in visualizing relationships to objectives and other stakeholders and prioritizing which involves ranking stakeholder relevance and identifying their various issues.
The first step in the mapping process involves understanding that there is no magic list of stakeholders for a company or for a project. According to Bendell (2017) the final list of stakeholders will depend on the project and the business, its impact and the current engagement activities of the project and therefore it ought not to remain static in nature. The list of stakeholders will keep on changing as the environment around the project and the business evolves and based on that whether the stakeholders change their opinion or decisions. The action which is involved in the identification of stakeholders is brainstorming a list of stakeholders without screening and including everyone who has an interest or stake in the objective of a project or business in the current time and who may have interest in the same in the future.
The second process in the stakeholder mapping process is analysing after the identification of the stakeholders which involves further analysis of the stakeholders in order to understand in a more effective way the relevance of the stakeholders and the perspective that they offer to the project or business. It also helps in understanding their relationship to the issue and to each other and also to prioritize based on their relative usefulness for this engagement. There are various criteria which help in the analysis of identified stakeholders which are as follows:
Contribution- Does the stakeholder group possess the information, expertise or counsel on the various issues of the projects which could be helpful for the project?
Legitimacy- How legitimate is the claim of the stakeholder or the stakeholder group regarding engagement with the project?
Willingness to Engage- How willing is the stakeholder or the group of stakeholder to engage with the project?
Influence- What influences and how much influence does the stakeholder have and who they are able to influence?
Necessity of involvement- Is the stakeholder someone or somebody who could derail or delegitimize the project or could affect the project in a negative manner.
The action which can be followed with respect to this step is using the above mentioned criteria’s to design and populate a chart with short descriptions of how stakeholders fulfil them. The chart will help in assigning values such as low, medium and high to the stakeholders which later help in deciding which stakeholders to engage in the planning of the project.
As stated by Andriof et al. (2017) the third process in the stakeholder mapping process is mapping, as mapping the stakeholders of a project is a virtual exercise and analysis tool which can be used effectively to determine which stakeholder groups are most useful to engage with during the project. The process of mapping helps in allowing to visualize where the stakeholder stand and belong when analysed by the same key criteria and compared to each other and also helps in visualizing the regular complex interplay of issues and relationships which are created in the criteria. The action which is involved in the mapping process is drawing a mapping in order to identify the stakeholders. The steps to create an effective mapping of stakeholders are as follows:
The fourth process in the stakeholder mapping process involves prioritizing stakeholder and identifying various issues as it is not advisable and un-necessary to engage with all the stakeholder groups of a project with the same level of intensity all the time as it leads to wastage of resources and time regarding the project. According to Higgs et al. (2018) it is very important to become strategic and clear in nature regarding whom and why the project is engaging with before jumping in a project as it helps in saving both time and money regarding a project and its implementation. The action which is followed in this process involves looking closely at the issues of the stakeholders and deciding accordingly whether the stakeholder group are materials of engagement in a particular project and its objectives and various questions such as what are the issues for the priority stakeholders, which issues do most of the stakeholders frequently express and are the actual issues logical and relevant to the engagement objectives of the project should be asked and answered.
In addition to combining of the criteria chart and the mapping chart it is very important to use materiality in order to rank the stakeholders into a prioritized engagement list which will help in capturing the most relevant stakeholders and their most relevant issues.
Fig: Approach/Tactics of stakeholder mapping
The above figure helps in depicting quadrant tactics which are used for the project
Fig: Stakeholder Mapping of Sydney Airport Runway
Source: (Author)
The above chart depicts the stakeholder mapping regarding the construction of proposed runway in the Sydney Airport. The various stakeholder or stakeholder groups which are involved in the process and numbered accordingly are as follows:
SH1- Investors
SH2- Airport Operators
SH3- Airlines
SH4- Federal Government and state Government
SH5- Local Community
As stated by Bell, Bricker, Tzou, Lee and Van Horne (2012) successful stakeholder engagement refers to engaging with a wide range of project stakeholders. There are various ways to engage with stakeholders. The following approaches are considered the most beneficial and effective approaches regarding engagement with the stakeholders in order to understand the reaction, perception inputs and knowledge regarding the construction of the new proposed runway in the Sydney Airport.
Stakeholder Focus Group- The engagement with the important and interested stakeholders are very necessary for the smooth completion of a project and therefore the focus group can be considered as an effective method which helps in the engagement of the important stakeholders of the project and helps in seeking their inputs and knowledge to the fullest. Focus group helps in providing with the quality information that an important project requires from its stakeholders and this process will also help in making the stakeholders of the project feel that they are important to the success of the project. According to Payán?Sánchez et al. (2018) the stakeholder focus group should involve the most important stakeholders of the project even if they are tough in their stance as by facilitating meetings in the group with the important stakeholders, the success rate of the project increases. This method of stakeholder engagement is considered to be most important and very effective in context with the current scenario as the various stakeholders who are involved in the current project are all important in nature and therefore it is very important to involve them and to seek their responses.
Questionnaires- Successful stakeholder engagement involves engaging with a wide range of stakeholders and therefore methods such as surveys helps in getting involved with a large number of stakeholders and to seek their responses and inputs. As stated by McDermott, Kurucz and Colbert (2018) the survey can be conducted in the form of questionnaires and be conducted over various medium such as the web, email, face to face or over the phone. There are various available stakeholder survey designing guides, templates and survey building tools which are available on the internet and it offers a variety of choices to the co-ordinator regarding selecting the survey that will be appropriate for the project. The design of the questionnaire survey should be done in such a way that it facilitates both open ended and close ended questions and also ensure that they both use a combination of scoring and free text areas in order to obtain detailed feedback from the stakeholders. This method of stakeholder engagement can be considered as appropriate for the current project as it helps in bringing out the best responses and views from the stakeholders who are unable to express their views in a detailed manner.
Stakeholder Interview- Stakeholder interview is an ideal method of engaging with stakeholders which helps in fully understanding an issue and helps in drawing out a particular stakeholder perspective which a project needs to focus upon in which interviews are conducted personally or in group with the most influential stakeholders of a project. According to Cottrell et al. (2014) the process of conducting stakeholder interviews offers great opportunity regarding gathering of required and quality inputs from the stakeholders and helps in building rapport with the stakeholders of the company which proves beneficial for the success of a project. The only disadvantage which is associated with the stakeholder interview method is that is requires a significant amount of time in conducting the interviews and therefore it is advisable that this technique of stakeholder engagement is used in order to discuss the most important issues of a project and in order to interact with the most important stakeholders of a project. This method of stakeholder engagement is considered to be important for the company as this process helps is discussing and resolving important issues of the project with the important stakeholders of the company so that an effective solution or consensus is reached between the expectations of the stakeholders and the key deliverables of the project.
Newsletter and E-mails- Every project contains stakeholders or a group of stakeholders who can be classified in the group of least important stakeholders and also all in to the category of show considerations. These stakeholders or group of stakeholders are not very influential for the project but can relatively damage to the success and future of a project if they are not involved in the stakeholder engagement process or if their views and inputs are not valued considerably and therefore it becomes a responsibility for the project co-ordinators too keep these stakeholders or group of stakeholders important and therefore these stakeholders or group of stakeholders must be kept informed through various means such as e-mails and newsletter as they have the capability to reach a wide audience. Communicating to the stakeholders through newsletter and e-mails helps in increasing the profile of a project and also helps in showcasing success of a project. In case of communicating to the least important stakeholders it should be kept in mind that it is very necessary to adjust the frequency of communication against the time available and also keep in mind there are some audiences who will not read the content of the carefully crafted e-mail and newsletter and therefore it is advised to try ‘pigging back’ on an existing publication regarding a project in order to save time and resources and also to increase credibility in the content of the newsletter and e-mail. This method of stakeholder engagement is effective in case of this project as it will help in satisfying the least important stakeholders of the project within the least possible time and resources and helps in focusing on engaging with the important stakeholders of the project.
Websites and Podcasts- In context with the success and effectiveness of a project it is very important that every project have a freely accessible shared area wherein information, important dates, documents and news of a particular project can be stored and made available to the stakeholders of a project. As stated by Vracheva, Judge and Madden (2016) a website or a webpage of a project is an ideal location through which all the stakeholders of the project can be communicated about the project and the most influential stakeholders of the project will be given to certain privileged areas of the website or webpage in order to take part in online surveys or to participate in online focus groups and the less important stakeholders of the project will be confined only to the news and development regarding a project. This process of stakeholder engagement acts same as newsletter and e-mails in order to demonstrate success but the extra addition in with this method of engagement is that it allows access to information to the stakeholders of a project. In case of website the stakeholders can pull the information towards them from the website whereas in case of newsletter and e-mails the information has to be pushed towards them. This method of stakeholder engagement is very important in the context of the project as this method helps in catering to the needs and demands of information of both the important and less important stakeholders of the company in a single platform which helps in the elimination of excess costs and time regarding the project.
As stated by Ryerson (2016) each of the above mentioned methods have several advantages and disadvantages when it comes to engaging with the stakeholders and therefore it is recommended to combine the above mentioned approaches and use a particular channel which the most appropriate to the interest and influence of the stakeholders of the company. For instances the stakeholders who fall in to the least important category can be engaged through open days or through the website of the company and not including them in the focus group as it will be waste of time and resources to include them in the focus group, but however the important groups which are not particularly interested about the project may benefit from the involvement in personal interviews and which might be the only way through which they can be drawn out.
The components of the implementation plan consist of the following elements:
|
Activities |
Timeline |
|
Identification of the stakeholders of the project |
1/10/2018- 5/10/2018 |
|
Analysing the stakeholders of the project |
5/10/2018-7/10/2018 |
|
Mapping the stakeholders based on their importance |
7/10/2018-10/10/2018 |
|
Managing the stakeholders of the project based on their importance and expectations |
10/10/2018- 15/10/2018 |
|
Creating a focus group of the most important stakeholders of the project |
15/10/2018-17/10/2018 |
|
Hiring various experts and specialists needed for successful staff engagement |
18/10/2018 |
|
Conducting face to face interviews with the most important stakeholders of the project |
19/10/2018-30/10/2018 |
|
Informing the least important stakeholders regarding the project and its implications. |
19/10/2018-30/10/2018 |
|
Monitoring the inputs and views of the least important stakeholders of the project. |
30/10/2018-3/11/2018 |
|
Engaging in communication through online surveys and questionnaires with the other important stakeholders of the project. |
4/11/2018-6/11/2018 |
|
Collecting values, inputs and knowledge from the most important stakeholders regarding their expectations from the project |
7/11/12018-10/11/2018 |
|
Analysing the compliances of the proposal and inputs put forward by the stakeholders with relevant regulatory, legal standards. |
11/11/2018-13/11/2018 |
|
Making necessary changes and modifications to the plan after it has been analysed for various compliances and submitting it to various experts and specialists for final analysis. |
14/11/2018-15/11/2018 |
|
Implementing the proposal |
16/11/2018- 16/12/2018 |
The various issues which can arise from the stakeholder engagement plan regarding the new proposed runway are as follows:
The problems which are bound to arise during the stakeholder engagement process can be solved through the following ways:
As opined by Payne and Calton (2017) the resources which are required for the stakeholder engagement process involve various financial resources in the form of investment in order to hire experts and specialists who are specialists in project management and project leadership in the air transports sector and also legal consultants in order to ensure that the project abides by all necessary legal standards and legislations in the project to oversee the smooth implementation of the project. The other resource which is required for the stakeholder engagement process involves technical resources such as the website of the company where the online surveys will be available and all the news and benefits regarding the project will be communicated to all the stakeholders groups of the project, mainly targeting the least important stakeholders of the company. The other resources which are required for the project are various case study reports and analysis which will help in highlighting the benefits of the project to the stakeholders of the project. The other resource which will be required for the effective stakeholder engagement is human resources who will be responsible for conducting various interviews and surveys regarding the expectations of the stakeholders regarding the project and will be also responsible for the analysis of the inputs and knowledge received from the stakeholders.
Conclusion:
From the above report it is clear and evident that stakeholder engagement is a very vital process for the success of any projects or any organizations as the objectives of an organization or a project are determined by the expectations of the stakeholders of the company or project. There can be various stakeholders for a project or an organization and therefore it is very important for a project or an organization to undertake stakeholder mapping in order to classify the stakeholders based on their importance and expectations from the project and organization so that wastage of money and resources can be stopped. It is also observed that the stakeholder engagement process involves arising of various issues which hampers the successful implementation of a project and therefore it is very important to develop solutions to address those issues.
References:
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Cottrell E, Whitlock E, Kato E, Uhl S, Belinson S, Chang C, Hoomans T, Meltzer, D., Noorani, H., Robinson, K. and Schoelles, K. (2014). Defining the benefits and challenges of stakeholder engagement in systematic reviews. Comparative Effectiveness Research, 2015, 13–19. Available: https://doaj.org/article/087bd1c4423242bf833953e89af478a2 [Accessed on 19 Sep. 2018]
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Mcdermott, K., Kurucz, E., & Colbert, B. (2018). Social entrepreneurial opportunity and active stakeholder participation: Resource mobilization in enterprising conveners of cross-sector social partnerships. Journal of Cleaner Production, 183, 121–131. Available: doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.02.010 [Accessed on 19 Sep. 2018]
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