Azlan Shah Ali

Factors affecting housing maintenance cost in Malaysia

Purpose – It has been found that the cost for housing maintenance is relatively high due to poor maintenance practices. This paper aims to determine and identify the factors contributing to rising maintenance costs.Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative approach was adopted that sought to gather factual data using the approach taken by El‐Haram and Horner. The research first identified the critical factors through a literature review. A total of Eighty questionnaires were then distributed to relevant respondents such as building managers or supervisors, maintenance management staff and others. In total, 31 completed questionnaires formed a database for descriptive and ranking analysis.Findings – The research concluded that five of the most dominant factors were expectation of tenants, building materials, building services, building age and failure to execute maintenance at the right time. Meanwhile, it was found that two of the most influential impacts were outstanding maintenance charges and over‐b...

Cost decision making in building maintenance practice in Malaysia

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to systematically identify important factors that are considered in decision making of maintenance cost and discuss how these factors affect maintenance performance.Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs triangulation technique, which combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. The paper starts with the identification of dominant factors through literature reviews followed by semi‐structured interviews with ten building managers and questionnaire survey. A set of questionnaires are distributed to 200 selected buildings managers in Malaysia. The results from 62 completed questionnaires form a database for the quantitative analysis.Findings – This paper concludes that the maintenance performance suffers from the insufficient allocation of maintenance cost. The main factors that are usually considered by the building managers in allocation of maintenance costs are availability of funding, clients preference, and economic situation. Associative test...

Involvement of key design participants in refurbishment design process

Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the relationship between the degrees of involvement of key design participants in the decision‐making process of refurbishment projects on the design performance.Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a literature review of the published journals and textbooks along with a postal questionnaire with professional architects. In total 234 selected professional architects in Malaysia were involved in a postal questionnaire survey. A total of 82 questionnaires or 36 percent were identified as being fit to be used for the data analysis.Findings – The degree of involvement of key participants are varied at all stages. Greater involvement of key participants is one of the ways to obtain more information on increased integration in the design process. Highest involvement of key design participants was found in the construction stage, which implies that more tasks need to be carried out in refurbishment projects. The involvement of an M&E engineer outside t...

The characteristics of refurbishment projects in Malaysia

Purpose – The main objectives of this paper are to identify general characteristics of refurbishment projects and problems arise in Malaysian context.Design/methodology/approach – Quantitative and qualitative approaches using postal questionnaire survey and semi‐structured interviews were used in data collection. A total of 1,552 questionnaire sets sent to professional architects.Findings – The results show that the majority of refurbishment projects in Malaysia involved residential and office types of building with contract value less than RM500,000.00 (USD 150,000.00). Some of major problem in refurbishment projects are inconsistence in clients needs, refurbishment projects exceed targeted costs and times.Research limitations/implications – The literature search and survey results showed that systematic studies into the refurbishment were relatively sparse. Therefore, more detail study gear towards refurbishment area is needed for Malaysian construction industry in the future. The findings provide gene...

Analytic Hierarchy Process Decision-Making Framework for Procurement Strategy Selection in Building Maintenance Work

AbstractThis paper presents a study of selection of procurement method in building maintenance management for public universities in Malaysia through the use of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM), particularly the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). There are many different types of procurement methods that have been developed to overcome the weaknesses of the existing procurement method and to meet the range of service requirement. The decision makers are faced with challenges when it comes to selecting the most appropriate procurement method for a specific building as different types of procurement methods suit different types of projects. This research seeks to investigate the current practices of the available procurement methods for building maintenance work in public universities and identify the procurement selection criteria to develop an effective decision-making framework. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 20 public universities in Malaysia with 85% response rate to identify and val...

Understanding the service provider perspective towards better service quality in local authorities

Purpose – The paper aims to provide better understanding of internal customer perspectives, i.e. the employees of local authorities (LAs) as a service provider in Malaysia. The research attempts to identify the contributing and the constraining factors affecting the quality of the services to the public.Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs a qualitative approach of primary data collection. Data were obtained through semi‐structured interviews and open‐ended question interviews. The study conducted involved service providers and officials from Johor Bahru City Council in the capital of Johor state, Malaysia.Findings – The paper revealed that substantial measures should be taken to ensure that the service provider is able to provide better service quality in the delivery system. It was also found that before the service providers are able to offer quality services to the public, the service providers have to first overcome the problems they face.Originality/value – The paper suggests that it is e...

Significant Characteristics of Scheduled and Condition-Based Maintenance in Office Buildings

AbstractSustainability of buildings is one of the main aims in the construction industry. In achieving sustainability, maintenance of buildings and its facilities, which include planning, implementation, and outcome of maintenance activities, becomes an important criterion. This paper aims to identify the significant characteristics of scheduled and condition-based maintenance in office buildings through reviews of relevant literature and a questionnaire survey. The significance of the characteristics was identified through ranking analysis. A semistructured interview was conducted to obtain further details on the characteristics and measures to enhance efficiency of the characteristics. The findings reveal that the dominant characteristics for scheduled maintenance include quality of spare part and material, the level of labor skill and knowledge, and budget allocation for maintenance labor, whereas for condition-based maintenance, the dominant characteristics are the level of manager skill and knowledge...

The Effect of Design on Maintenance for School Buildings in Penang, Malaysia

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to focus on identifying building elements with design defects and established the relationship between design defects and difficulties in carrying out maintenance works.Design/methodology/approach – A total of four cases have been selected covering primary‐ and secondary‐level for both National and National‐type schools (commonly known as vernacular schools). Interviews with school management were carried out throughout the study to assess the common design defects in the buildings.Findings – A list of the design defects that have caused high maintenance cost was tabulated. It could be concluded that the most common design defects are building facade and missing slot underneath the floor slab which led to more defects.Research limitations/implications – Only four schools in Penang, Malaysia were involved in this study. Data were gathered from the school management and maintenance personnel. No data have been obtained from the designers because difficulties in tracing...

The designer in refurbishment projects: implications to the compatibility of design

Purpose – In refurbishment design, the individual designer is the one who ultimately determines the quality and performance of a project, but not his or her organization. Hence, various specific attributes are essential in the designers undertaking refurbishment projects. This directly influences the refurbishment project performance. The aims of this paper are to identify the important designers attributes of refurbishment works and to develop prediction models for designer selection.Design/methodology/approach – The study started with the identification of an important designers attributes through literature review followed by a questionnaire survey. A set of questionnaires was distributed to 100 selected designers who handled refurbishment projects in Malaysia.Findings – In conclusion, the study identified six key designers attributes in refurbishment projects. The associative test shows that to improve a refurbishment project performance, the designers need to have knowledge, enthusiasm, commitment...

The effects of formalisation on coordination and effectiveness of refurbishment projects

Purpose – The papers aim is to establish the relationships between the formalisation of construction firms on the level of coordination and effectiveness of refurbishment projects.Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a literature review of published journals and textbooks, a postal questionnaire survey with managing directors, project managers and contract managers. About 94 construction companies were selected for the postal questionnaire survey. In total, 54 (57 percent) of returned questionnaires were considered to be useful for statistical analysis.Findings – Highly formalised construction firms require higher level of coordination than lowly formalised construction firms. In highly formalised construction firms, the participants managing refurbishment projects tend to circumvent formalisation by having more informal interactions, which contradicts the needs of the firms. The effectiveness of highly formalised construction firms is not significantly better than lowly formalise...