Stakeholders can be divided into two main groups:

1. Direct (or primary)
2. Indirect (or secondary)

Direct Stakeholders: Direct Stakeholders are those who are firectly associated or involved in the planning, administration or execution of the project. These include the client, project sponsor, project manager, members of the project team, technical and financial services providers, internal or external consultants, material and equipment suppliers, site personnel, contractors and subcontractors as well as end users. In other words, people or organizations directly involved in all or some of the various phases of the project are called direct stakeholders.

Direct stakeholders mainly consist of positive stakeholders as they are the ones concerned with the design and implementation of the project with the object of completing it within the speci- fied parameters of time, cost and quality/performance. They therefore include the sponsor, the project manager and the project design and construction/installation teams.

Indirect Stakeholders: Indirect stakeholders covers all the work indirectly associated with the project, such as internal managers of the organization and support staff not directly involved in the project, including the HR depart- ment, accounts department, secretariat, senior management levels not directly responsible for the project and, last but not the least, the families of the project manager and team members.

A subsection of indirect stakeholders are those representing the regulatory authorities, such as national and local government, public utilities, licencing and inspecting organizations, technical institutions, professional bodies and personal interest groups such as stockholders, labour unions and pressure group.

The indirect stakeholders group probably contains the greatest number of potential negative stakeholders. These could include environmental pressure groups, trade (labour) unions, local residents’ associations and even politicians (usually in opposition) who object to the project on principle or on environmental grounds.