I assume you are asking this question as you have a separate sys admin team from your basis team and they don’t want to provide you with root access. This is something I have been up against in the past and I have seen it solved in two ways. The first, and easiest, is to have the sys admin push a unix window with root access out to your PC. This way you don’t actually have to know the root password to do your work. They can also put some sort of logging on to watch what you do if that makes them feel better.
The other option is to have the sys admins create you a “root-like” id which has the access necessary to install. I believe that what we did for this one is to create a copy of the root user but to disallow updates to certain items, like the password file and the root level folder.
However, if your sys admins are very particular they may not be satisfied with either option – good luck!!