EastLink: Stakeholders

EASTLINK: STAKEHOLDERS
SUCCINCT OVERVIEW OF THE ORGANISATION AND THE TYPE OF
INDUSTRY.
EastLink in Victoria is one of the largest urban project of road construction that
consists of 39 kilometre long electronic tollway linking the Eastern Freeway with
Frankston Freeway. The connector project of Mitcham to Melbourne southeast
values around $2.5 billion as the net present value. The Melbourne
Transportation Plan proposed the project first in the year 1969 at different
occasions including in 2008 as a part of Victorian Transport Plan (Khansefid,
2017). In 2016, the Victorian infrastructure identified this project as the most
important road project and prioritized it equally. The CEO of the organisation
Michel Masson commented that despite the existence of different projects, the
prioritised one is North East Link. The estimated cost of the deal for completing it
in ten years was $5-10 billions.
In order to proceed with preliminary site works and investigation along with
technical, environmental and engineering works, the Victorian government
allocated $100 million in the budget of 2017/18. The 45km freeway EastLink
serves around a million people living in corridor east consisting the 39Km
tollway and 6Km non-tolled bypass at Ringwood and Dandenong. The
challenge at the primary stage that Thiess John Holland was facing is
coordination amongst the complexities of the project against tight time structure,
competitive budget and resource constraints of the varying range of
stakeholders. Thiess considered early communication to be the key to success of
stakeholder management (Rajablu, Marthandan and Yusoff, 2015, pp. 111).
The damaging issues of the project was largely comprehended by people in
asking them to review on the potential risks they face in the project. The
communication lines were always maintained to be open that initiated
transparent resolution to issues before the work begins.
Effective partnership in the teams built had been noticed that focused on
detail of work planning and reporting. Quality management has been a priority
of the project developing the standards of the operations maintaining safety and
regulations (Mok, Shen and Yang, 2015, pp. 446-457).
The industry of the Victorian road constructions refer to the Civil Contractors
Federation that is at the peak of the field representing the civil construction
industry of Australia having more than 2000 contractors and national members
associated over 520 in number.
WHO ARE YOUR KEY STAKEHOLDERS?
The list of stakeholders of EastLink project can be categorised as primary and
secondary. The primary refers to the stakeholders keeping a direct link in the
business impact and financial deals with the project and secondary refers to the
stakeholders indirectly connected to the venture or having impact from external
side.
WHAT ARE THE TENSIONS THAT MAY EXIST BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS?
The most significant cause of tensions that can exist between these stakeholders
is lack of communication that reflect the progression of the project and its
essential needs to deliver the strategies made and implemented in the project. It
is necessary for the central operating party to convey the decisions taken to their
potential stakeholders. With notion of tensions arise in miscommunicating
information to the stakeholders; there are possibilities of conflicts where each of
the stakeholder groups may either support or oppose the decisions taken by the
project administrators (Warner, 2016, pp. 17-36).
HOW WOULD YOU DEAL WITH ANY POTENTIAL CONFLICT OR MISALIGNMENT
OF PRIORITIES?
At the immediate stage of analysing the business policies and execution, it is
necessary to follow certain steps that can avoid the notion of future conflicts to
arise.
Identifying the stakeholders: The identification of potential stakeholders is
necessary that provides a clear conception to the company in preparing the
budget and cost analysis holding the significant stakeholders a part of the deal
(Butler et al. 2015, pp. 212-225).
Determining the source of power of the stakeholders: The power analysis of
each of the stakeholders identified is necessary to optimize their category of
importance and structure a proper mapping as per preference (Garcia‐Castro
and Francoeur, 2016, pp. 406-424).
Defining the aspect of influencing stakeholders either positively or negatively:
Apart from identifying the potential stakeholders, it is important to tally if the
business operations are positively or negatively influencing the operational
activities.
Determining the current attitude of the stakeholder: The significance
of ensuring the current strategies and reactions of the stakeholders follow up
the need of developing plans to communicate with them for resolving conflicts
(Sunder M, 2016, pp. 132-150).
Developing the communication plan (influencing strategy): In order to review the
stakeholder assessment regarding attitudes and understanding the gap of
desires, it is necessary to develop communication plans for creating common
points of discussion and settling the prevailing issue of conflict (Carroll and
Buchholtz, 2014).
Maintaining the upgraded stakeholder analysis as well as communication plan:
Stakeholder management refers to a continuous procedure that evolves in the
entire project execution time and creates impact on the ultimate outcome. Hence,
to review critically the plans and suggestions of stakeholders,
maintaining the same communication is necessary. The strategy helps in aligning
communication clearly and avoids conflict by avoiding misalignment of priorities
(Conway, 2017, pp. 829).
CONCLUSION
Hence, from the above discussions, it can be concluded that identifying and
prioritising the right stakeholders on time is significant for the organisation as it
addresses the right partners who help the company or project to grow. In case
of EastLink, the stakeholders have a significant power in developing the project
as well as creating links to new resources by defining the overall growth of
industry.
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