Organisational Interventions for Improving Mental Health of Project Management Practitioners during COVID-19 in Architecture, Engineering and Construction Sectors in Australia

Abstract

The introduction of COVID-19-related psychosocial risks to the Australian architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) project organisation has triggered the development of innovative organisational interventions for mitigating the risks and promoting of positive mental health among project management (PM) practitioners. Therefore, the paper aims to explore the COVID-19-related organisational interventions for improving mental health in the AEC project organisation. Through a comprehensive literature review, 20 organisation interventions were retrieved, and an online expert forum was conducted with nine industry experts. The results of the expert opinion confirmed the 20 organisational interventions identified from the literature. Moreover, the organisational interventions were used to develop a questionnaire survey distributed among PM practitioners via convenient sampling. Mean score ranking analysis was used to analyses the survey responses from 58 participants. The research findings show that the identified organisational interventions are important, but are ranked differently by architecture, engineering and construction sectors based on their importance in promoting mental health.