Ayesha Ahmad 
Assessing the Level of Stakeholder Involvement During Planning Stage of Public Sector Construction Projects in Pakistan 

Master’s Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics – Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: A, Bahria University (Bahria University Lahore), course: MS Project Management – Stakeholder Engagement, language: English, abstract: Construction projects, from their early stages to the completion phases are executed through the efforts and involvement of various groups of people. These groups are referred to as the ‘project stakeholders’. For successful implementation of a construction project, stakeholder management has got a crucial role. Stakeholder management is not an easy task and it needs proper consideration for successful implementation of a construction project. Based on the observations and previous researches, a gap has been identified regarding evaluation of stakeholder involvement during planning stage of the construction projects in Pakistani Construction industry. Therefore, the current research aims at the evaluation of level of stakeholder involvement during planning stage of construction projects at Pakistan level. One of the aims of this research is also to understand the concept of the stakeholder involvement in the construction industry and for examining the ways that stakeholder engagement can be empowered appropriately and efficiently to assist in achieving the ultimate goals of the project in shape of project out comes. Through the literature major stakeholders involved in a construction project are identified as: client, project management team, consultant and design team, contractor, sub-contractor, suppliers, employees, local communities, sponsor and government authorities. The involvement level of these stakeholders has been assessed on different project planning activities. The results show that early stakeholder involvement help the organization for finding better solutions for the problems. Moreover, it helps in aligning the project goals with stakeholder expectations. In different planning activities different involvement levels of stakeholders have been identified. Project managers have the highest involvement during the planning stage and local communities have the least. It revealed that considerate attention should be given to empowering the more effective incorporation of different project members during the project planning process. Analysis of the result also confirmed the findings from the literature stating that an effective involvement of stakeholders will highly contribute to resolving, or improving several issues involved in the project early. It is therefore recommended that the project managers should adopt improved decision making strategies for effective stakeholder involvement employing the different useful technique.