Joseph H.K. Lai

Perceived Importance of the Quality of the Indoor Environment in Commercial Buildings

Recognition of the importance of the quality of the indoor environment (IEQ) to health, comfort and productivity of building end users has produced increasing numbers of voluntary schemes whose assessment embraces a wide spectrum of environmental attributes. Studies which aim to derive appropriate weighting factors for these attributes through soliciting the perceived importance from experts are abundant. This article reports the findings of a study which, based on face-to-face interviews with 548 end users and 66 building professionals, processed their perceived importance of IEQ using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Attributes included were thermal comfort, air cleanliness, odor and noise associated with the air conditioning system of typical commercial buildings. Correlation analysis of the ranking results of the AHP weights revealed the difference in perceived importance of the attributes according to gender of the respondents. Other factors also found to have influence on the perceived importance of the IEQ were whether the respondents were professionals or other end users and the reason for them working or visiting the buildings and the duration of their stay. These all varied with psychophysical factors such as personal experiences, needs and expectations. Further work is needed to study whether the weighting factors should be derived from the perceptions of experts, end users, or a balance between the two.

Expenditure on operation and maintenance service and rental income of commercial buildings

Purpose – The recession in the late 1990s in Hong Kong has triggered many commercial building owners to cut operation and maintenance (O&M) cost via outsourcing. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dominant expenditure on O&M service and examine the relation between extent of outsourcing and rental income of the buildings.Design/methodology/approach – Experienced O&M practitioners were interviewed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data of the commercial buildings they looked after. The in‐house and outsourced O&M costs, air‐conditioning energy costs, rental incomes, and management and air‐conditioning fees for the buildings were analysed.Findings – The total air‐conditioning O&M cost is the principal cost item, with the energy cost being the dominant element. The analysis reveals that the extent of outsourcing bore little correlation with the air‐conditioning O&M cost and the rental income.Research limitations/implications – Further work may take a similar approach to identify the e...

Knowledge and perception of operation and maintenance practitioners in Hong Kong about sustainable buildings

Purpose – To investigate the knowledge and perception of serving and prospective operation and maintenance (OM full‐time practitioners studying part‐time on undergraduate BSE/FM courses; and full‐time undergraduate BSE/FM students. A total of 168 responses were collected and analysed.Findings – The respondents were largely unaware of the initiatives for promoting building environmental performance and sustainability. Their knowledge level about sustainable buildings was generally low and bore little correlation with their work experience, attendance to CPD training and undergraduate studies that they...

Monitoring building operation and maintenance contracts

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to study the use of management tools and their costs for monitoring building operation and maintenance (O&M) service contracts.Design/methodology/approach – The management tools usable for monitoring building O&M contracts were reviewed, with their characteristics highlighted and compared. A series of face‐to‐face interviews with practitioners looking after building O&M contracts was conducted to collect empirical information, followed by data analysis and discussion of the results.Findings – The paper finds that using balanced scorecard or benchmarking to monitor building O&M contracts was unpopular. The use of customer satisfaction survey was rather common. The cost for monitoring contracts through performance review meeting and O&M audit was measured. It tended to reduce in relative amount with larger scale of contracts.Research limitations/implications – More research is needed to study the effect of factors, including propriety of contract, complexity of work, co...

Carbon audit : a literature review and an empirical study on a hotel

Purpose – Worldwide, many carbon audit guidelines have been developed, but comparative reviews of these guidelines and empirical findings of carbon emissions from hotels remain limited. The aim of the study reported here was to bridge these knowledge gaps.Design/methodology/approach – A comparative review of the legislations and guidelines for carbon audits in Australia, the UK and Hong Kong was made. An empirical audit, which entailed a series of site visits and interviews for collecting the record data of a typical hotel in Hong Kong, was conducted to identify the sources and amounts of carbon emissions from the hotel.Findings – Conducting carbon audits for buildings in Hong Kong is entirely voluntary. Reporting of certain scopes of carbon emissions is at the sole discretion of the reporting party. Purchased electricity for the hotel is the dominant source of carbon emissions.Research implications – Audits in future may follow the reported audit process to identify carbon emissions from other hotels to ...

Disputes arising from vaguely defined contractual responsibilities in building services maintenance contracts

A clear definition of the responsibilities of the contracting parties is crucial to any contract. However, many building services maintenance contracts contain vague terms that are often causes of disputes, suspension of work, unsatisfactory performance and financial losses. Common vague contract terms include those that require the contractor to be responsible for any replacement and restoration work arising from “fair wear and tear” and “vandalism”. Reports the findings of a survey of maintenance practitioners’ interpretations of these terms, and their experience with the use of such terms in building services maintenance contracts in Hong Kong.

Building operation and maintenance: education needs in Hong Kong

Purpose – Built facilities, in order to be sustainable, have to be operated and maintained by practitioners who possess the appropriate types and levels of knowledge. The study reported in this paper aims to identify the available higher education programmes in this relation and to investigate what kinds of education are needed by the operation and maintenance (O&M) practitioners in Hong Kong.Design/methodology/approach – The published information of the building‐related programmes offered by the local higher education institutions was reviewed. A questionnaire, designed, piloted and distributed with the support given by the leading O&M society in Hong Kong, was used to survey the perceptions and opinions of the practitioners.Findings – No education programme had been tailored for producing professionals to meet the rising demand for O&M works. The practitioners indicated their strong wish to learn more, in particular, about energy and environmental management, and testing and commissioning. Their desire ...

Operation and maintenance: The perception of Hong Kong's general public about building services

Purpose – The survey reported here is intended to obtain an understanding of the general publics perception about building services and building services practitioners in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach – Targeting a sampling error of within ±1 per cent at a confidence level of 95 per cent, a team of six surveyors conducted face‐to‐face interviews with 751 laypersons at places around 11 residential estates. Findings – Over 90 per cent of the general public know the presence of various building services installations in buildings and 12 per cent know that building services is the collective name of such installations. The general public are satisfied with the operability and reliability of building services installations but are just marginally satisfied with their performance at higher levels, such as energy conservation and indoor air quality control. Research limitations/implications – A paucity of teenagers know about building services, which is a concern to the future development of both the building services profession and the facilities management (FM) industry in Hong Kong. Future work may investigate the situation in other regimes with a similar FM setting and study on how the profession is perceived for buildings with restricted access to the general public. Operation and maintenance personnel of the FM offices, who are approached by most people when problems with building services installations arise, are the key on the perceived image of building services professionals. Originality/value – In addition to informing higher educational institutes the need to reinforcing promotion of building services engineering to school leavers, the findings can help professional institutions in formulating how the social status of building services engineers may be raised.

Analytical assessment and comparison of facilities management services for residential estates

Populous places are particularly in need of high-rise residential buildings, which are increasingly built as estates. The facilities in these estates entail proper management in order to serve the numerous residents there. Aimed at evaluating the facilities management (FM) services for three major kinds of residential estates (‘public’, ‘semi-public’ and ‘private’), a study was conducted based on a performance-importance-cost (PIC) evaluation model. The end-users’ perceived importance and performance levels and the cost data of the FM services for a public estate, a semi-public estate and a private estate were analyzed using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Fishers least significant difference (LSD) procedure. The importance and performance levels of the services and their differences between the estates were revealed. The highest service performance and cost levels were found with the private estate, followed by the semi-public estate and the public estate, while the orders of their cost-effectiveness reversed. Rather than assessing merely the cost or performance of services, using the approach of this study to examine their cost-effectiveness can enable more holistic evaluations towards strategic property management.

Developing a performance evaluation scheme for engineering facilities in commercial buildings: state-of-the-art review

Various post-occupancy evaluation schemes have been introduced for assessing building performance but one tailored for large-scale commercial buildings remains to be seen. Intended to develop a scheme for evaluating the performance of engineering facilities in existing commercial buildings, a multi-stage study was carried out in a dense-built metropolis – Hong Kong. Reported here is the part of work based on an extensive literature review. Considering the characteristics of relevant evaluation schemes, the requirements for useful performance evaluation and the criteria for selecting key performance indicators (KPIs), an integrated process-hierarchy model was formed for identifying applicable indicators for the intended scheme. A total of 71 indicators, classified into five categories: (i) physical, (ii) financial, (iii) task and equipment related, (iv) environmental, and (v) health, safety and legal, were identified. Their representations and their empirical applications, which are helpful for the strategic management of existing buildings, are also described.