Identifying Project Stakeholders--Intervenor Groups

Any environmental, political, social, community-activist, or consumer groups that can have a positive or (more likely) a detrimental effect on the project's development and successful launch are referred to as "intervenor groups" (Cleland 1988). That is, they have the capacity to intervene in the project development and force their concerns to be included in the equation for project implementation. There are some classic examples of intervenor groups curtailing major construction projects, particularly within the nuclear power plant construction industry. As federal, state, and even local regulators decide to involve themselves in these construction projects, they have at their disposal the legal system as a method for tying up or even curtailing projects. Prudent project managers need to make a realistic assessment of the nature of their projects and the likelihood that one intervenor group or another may make an effort to impose their will on the development process. In fact, in some of the better-known project success stories, the construction project manager devoted a great deal of time early in the process to make a stakeholder management assessment of the potential intervenor groups, plotting out strategies for finding the most effective and cost-efficient ways of dealing with them.