Hafez Salleh

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...

Dimensions of information technology infrastructure flexibility in improving management efficacy of construction industry perspective: A conceptual study

As technologies change rapidly, improved information technology (IT) products and services are released daily throughout the world. This phenomenon gives tremendous pressure on organization managers to plan, implement and adopt new technology solution in accommodating such changes. Thus, one of the most significant current discussions is IT infrastructure flexibility. Most of the studies in IT infrastructure flexibility have been carried out across industries; however less attention has been paid to measure flexibility of IT infrastructure in construction industry. The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual understanding on how IT infrastructure flexibility responds in changing the business demand by exploring the dimensions that could be used to measure IT within construction industry. The study is based on textual reading in a range of recently published works, of which majority of them are from 2000 to 2010. The findings will provide potential variables about each dimension in measuring IT infrastructure flexibility, indicating factors that can be used for future development of an IT infrastructure flexibility maturity model. In this context, the maturity model will be useful for construction organisations to determine where they are. It also offers a benchmark for assessing different organisations for equivalent comparison.

Guidelines for internal arrangement of Islamic house

Islamic architecture could not be expressed by the outer looks of the buildings but it is actually the concentration on the interior part as opposed to the exterior or façade of the buildings. Islam is the official religion of Malaysia, however, there are still no specific guidelines for developers to build and design the internal part of houses for Muslim accordingly to Islamic teachings or to their Creators requirements. The principal aim of this research is to produce basic Islamic guidelines for the developers to build and design the internal part of houses for Muslims in this country. Data was gathered from public, mainly Malaysian Muslims who owned a house or more than a house via questionnaire survey and supplemented by a personal interview with an experienced person from an urban developer company in Kuala Lumpur. The study revealed that several Muslims are still lack of knowledge on the proper Islamic ways or teachings when choosing the design of a house especially the interior part of it. This means that they are unaware on the importance of having the Islamic knowledge of choosing and buying a house or houses accordingly to their Creators requirements which have been expressly inside the Al-Quran and Sunnah. The research finding concluded that the idea of producing a basic guideline of building a Muslim house accordingly to the Islamic teachings whereby it signifies that it is feasible as Islam is the official religion of Malaysia.