Managing stakeholders in construction projects is crucial since stakeholders are perceived as a significant source of uncertainty because of the various stakeholders involved, especially in mixed development projects. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) method was used to analyse and select the most relevant publications from two identified databases: SCOPUS and Web of Science (WoS). Only 55 of 1600 publications were identified as relevant to stakeholder impact factors in the construction projects. Towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, 10 stakeholder impact factors affecting the success of mixed development project management during the COVID-19 pandemic were identified and arranged by frequency: stakeholder engagement, stakeholder relationship, stakeholder attribute, stakeholder influence, stakeholder interest, stakeholder needs, stakeholder satisfaction, stakeholder expectation, and stakeholder behaviour. The outcome of this study would assist the construction project team in effectively managing and engaging with the relevant stakeholders to attain SDG 11 associated with sustainable cities and communities, specifically for the mixed development projects during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The construction industry remains an important economic sector that supports the growth of a nation. It is vital to maintain the industry’s momentum when facing the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, or similar in the future, to ensure employability and decent jobs for every individual in the industry, especially foreign labourers who are always regarded as vulnerable. Improving existing project communications management practices is essential to suppressing infection among labourers; however, there are only a few efforts made to understand the current condition. This study explores the communications management barriers and the potential improvement measures amid the COVID-19 outbreak sweeping across the Malaysian construction industry. The findings disclose that out of eleven communication channels, only six communications management barrier variables with eight items, and three communications management improvement measure variables with seven items, are classified as highly critical, based on a systematic literature review (SLR), and a questionnaire survey on 100 foreign labourers and management team members, respectively, where the data gathered were analysed using the Rasch measurement model. The finding also suggests that site review meetings, team meeting discussions and project reports require immediate attention to ensure the construction industry remains robust without significant interruption during the course of the pandemic.

The property sector is revitalised to incorporate sustainability, specifically the biophilic design, to encourage human interaction with nature. Thus, there is an urgent need to communicate the biophilic design elements amongst stakeholders, especially the foreign workers, to ensure the project meets the requirement. However, standard project communications management is no longer practical, as the construction industry worldwide has been severely impacted by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Hence, this paper evaluates the biophilic design elements to be communicated and examines the project communications management breakdown relating to the biophilic design elements in the Malaysian construction industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a systematic literature review (SLR), focus group discussion (FGD) and questionnaire survey on 147 foreign workers, this paper found that from 33 biophilic design element items, only 1 item is categorised as highly critical, whereas another 20 items are categorised as critical. In addition, 43 potential communications management breakdown items from a total of 66 items fall under the critical category. The finding suggests that communication breakdown is caused by the language barrier amongst foreign workers from different ethnicities as well as between foreign workers and the supervisors, since face to face communication is limited during the pandemic.