Correlation Analysis of Building Performance and Occupant’s Satisfaction via Post Occupancy Evaluation for Malaysia’s Public Buildings

The purpose of a building is to provide shelter for activities that carried out by the building users. The question is, does the facilities in the building perform well and appropriate to its use? The needs of occupants are affected by the building performance and on occupants’ evaluation of the buildings. Hence, Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is introduced to empower the occupants’ opinion as the benchmark of building performance evaluation. POE comprises as one of the technique that is used to evaluate whether a building meets the user’s requirement. The broad aim of this paper is to determine the correlation of public buildings and occupant’s satisfaction; in order to seek possible opportunities for government involvement (as the building owner) and the public (as the user) to evaluate the performance criteria. By using a proposed framework of POE, the study has revealed that 74% of the aspects in building performance are in high correlation with the occupants’ satisfaction. The study concludes that the application of POE is effective and beneficial to be used by the public sector in evaluating the performance of public buildings in Malaysia.Post occupancy evaluation; Public buildings; Building performance; occupants’ satisfaction; Correlation analysis

Green Procurement in Construction: Analysis of the Readiness Level and Key Catalyst among Construction Enablers

In the concern of sustainability and increasing awareness of environmental degradation, the Malaysian government has promoted numerous initiatives on green growth and green procurement (GP) to maintain and minimize the ecological effects in construction. However, this initiative is still in the infancy stage as to date, there is no specific guideline delineated to the construction industry, and it has yet to be enforced by the government to the construction practitioners. In construction, green procurement is a new area, and immediate actions are needed upon the principles, guidelines, and policy and implementation framework. Hence, this research aims to analyse the readiness level, barriers, and key catalysts among construction enablers towards adopting green procurement in the construction industry. Questionnaires were distributed to 102 construction enablers, focusing on quantity surveying firms in the Klang Valley area (Kuala Lumpur and Selangor), and 87 returned the responses. The analysis uses descriptive statistics via mean score, and the standard deviation was used to measure the variables and the mean's dispersion. It is revealed that the consultants are ready to adopt green procurement. However, GP's implementation's top challenges are lack of internal expertise, low awareness about green procurement, and lack of established best practices, standardized procedures and guidelines. It can be summarized that promoting GP and its implementation requires government support in policies, initiatives, and incentives. As the current practice is fragmented, ideally, GP's adoption in construction projects needs to conform to the acceptable standards that enable specific provisions to acquire eco-friendly sustainable construction

Performance of High Strength Concrete Containing Treated Fine Metakaolin, Palm Oil Fuel Ash, and Coal Bottom Ash as Substitute Materials Toward Compressive Strength and Flexural Strength Test

The annual increase in cement use has a detrimental effect on the environment. To lessen the harmful effects on the environment, concrete production now incorporates industrial waste from power plants such as coal bottom ash and palm oil fuel ash (POFA). In order to create more environmentally friendly concrete, this study used metakaolin (MK), palm oil fuel ash (POFA), and coal bottom ash (CBA). The purpose of this study is to determine how these substitute materials affect the compressive and tensile strengths of concrete. MK and POFA are partial cement replacements, whereas CBA is a partial sand replacement. The compressive and flexural strengths of the concrete were assessed to determine the impact of these materials on its strength. The trials used 20% MK and 10% CBA as the constants and 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% POFA as cement substitutions for the variables. The concrete with a 10% POFA replacement had the highest compressive strength (78 MPa) and flexural strength (7.5 MPa) among the other concrete mixes while having the best workability

Correlation Analysis of Building Performance and Occupant’s Satisfaction via Post Occupancy Evaluation for Malaysia’s Public Buildings

The purpose of a building is to provide shelter for activities that carried out by the building users. The question is, does the facilities in the building perform well and appropriate to its use? The needs of occupants are affected by the building performance and on occupants’ evaluation of the buildings. Hence, Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is introduced to empower the occupants’ opinion as the benchmark of building performance evaluation. POE comprises as one of the technique that is used to evaluate whether a building meets the user’s requirement. The broad aim of this paper is to determine the correlation of public buildings and occupant’s satisfaction; in order to seek possible opportunities for government involvement (as the building owner) and the public (as the user) to evaluate the performance criteria. By using a proposed framework of POE, the study has revealed that 74% of the aspects in building performance are in high correlation with the occupants’ satisfaction. The study concludes that the application of POE is effective and beneficial to be used by the public sector in evaluating the performance of public buildings in Malaysia

Removal efficiency for micro-polystyrene in water by the oil-based ferrofluid employ response surface methodology

This research article presents a study on the potential use of oil-based ferrofluid for the efficient removal of microplastics from water. The targeted analyte, micro-polystyrene (micro-PS), was chosen along with palm oil as the carrier liquid. Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis was conducted to identify the main peaks in the ferrofluid, including carboxyl group (1542 cm-1), C-H bonding (1022 cm-1), CH2 bonding (2941 cm-1), CH3 bonding (3461 cm-1), C=C bonding (1255 cm-1), and Fe-O (597.34 cm-1). A comprehensive investigation of the synergistic effect of six variables was performed: volume of oil (4-15 mL), weight of magnetite nanoparticles (0.1-0.2 g), stirring rate (132-468 rpm), contact time (3-12 min), pH value of water samples (pH 6-8), and effect on ionic strength (0-16 g/L). Response surface methodology, including 26 -Plackett-Burman and 24 -central composite design, were employed to establish the relationship between the variables. The optimum operational settings proposed by the model were as follows: volume of oil (14.6 mL), weight of magnetite nanoparticles (0.1 g), stirring rate (216 rpm), contact time (3.29 min), pH value of water samples (pH 6-6.5), and effect on ionic strength (16 g/L), resulting in a remarkable removal efficiency of 91.09 ± 0.99%. The method exhibited desirable figures of merit, including a low bias (%RSD) of below 5% and the ability to reuse the ferrofluids for up to five cycles. Additionally, an analytical greenness metric was employed to assess the environmental impact of the sample preparation process, with a green score of 0.69/1.0 (indicating a light green colour). Future work in this field could focus on the scalability of the developed method and its applicability to real-wastewater treatment

Effects of a high-dose 24-h infusion of tranexamic acid on death and thromboembolic events in patients with acute gastrointestinal bleeding (HALT-IT): an international randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background: Tranexamic acid reduces surgical bleeding and reduces death due to bleeding in patients with trauma. Meta-analyses of small trials show that tranexamic acid might decrease deaths from gastrointestinal bleeding. We aimed to assess the effects of tranexamic acid in patients with gastrointestinal bleeding. Methods: We did an international, multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled trial in 164 hospitals in 15 countries. Patients were enrolled if the responsible clinician was uncertain whether to use tranexamic acid, were aged above the minimum age considered an adult in their country (either aged 16 years and older or aged 18 years and older), and had significant (defined as at risk of bleeding to death) upper or lower gastrointestinal bleeding. Patients were randomly assigned by selection of a numbered treatment pack from a box containing eight packs that were identical apart from the pack number. Patients received either a loading dose of 1 g tranexamic acid, which was added to 100 mL infusion bag of 0·9% sodium chloride and infused by slow intravenous injection over 10 min, followed by a maintenance dose of 3 g tranexamic acid added to 1 L of any isotonic intravenous solution and infused at 125 mg/h for 24 h, or placebo (sodium chloride 0·9%). Patients, caregivers, and those assessing outcomes were masked to allocation. The primary outcome was death due to bleeding within 5 days of randomisation; analysis excluded patients who received neither dose of the allocated treatment and those for whom outcome data on death were unavailable. This trial was registered with Current Controlled Trials, ISRCTN11225767, and ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01658124. Findings: Between July 4, 2013, and June 21, 2019, we randomly allocated 12 009 patients to receive tranexamic acid (5994, 49·9%) or matching placebo (6015, 50·1%), of whom 11 952 (99·5%) received the first dose of the allocated treatment. Death due to bleeding within 5 days of randomisation occurred in 222 (4%) of 5956 patients in the tranexamic acid group and in 226 (4%) of 5981 patients in the placebo group (risk ratio [RR] 0·99, 95% CI 0·82–1·18). Arterial thromboembolic events (myocardial infarction or stroke) were similar in the tranexamic acid group and placebo group (42 [0·7%] of 5952 vs 46 [0·8%] of 5977; 0·92; 0·60 to 1·39). Venous thromboembolic events (deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism) were higher in tranexamic acid group than in the placebo group (48 [0·8%] of 5952 vs 26 [0·4%] of 5977; RR 1·85; 95% CI 1·15 to 2·98). Interpretation: We found that tranexamic acid did not reduce death from gastrointestinal bleeding. On the basis of our results, tranexamic acid should not be used for the treatment of gastrointestinal bleeding outside the context of a randomised trial

Benchmarking Users’ Feedback as Risk Mitigation in Building Performance for Higher Education Buildings (HEB)

AbstractHigher education building (HEB) is believed to be key functional. It spawns not only environment, but also human and economic resources. Initially, growing students’ population with various learning activities has constituted risk emergence, inefficient of energy use and climate discomfort. Thus, it decreases the yearly total performance of the building. To sustain the building efficiency, Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) plays a vital role to improve performance issues in HEB. Hence, this paper explores the significance of users’ feedback as the concept of building performance. This paper also describes literatures on the HEB's background including risk factors and performance issues

Analytical Hierarchy Process for Developing a Building Performance-Risk Rating Tool

The need to optimize the performance of buildings has increased consequently due to the expansive supply of facilities in higher education building (HEB). Proper performance assessment as a proactive measure may help university building in achieving performance optimization. However, the current maintenance programs or performance evaluation in the HEB is a systemic and cyclic process where maintenance is considered as an operational issue and not as opposed to a strategic issue. Hence, this paper proposed a Building Performance Risk Rating Tool (BPRT) as an improved measure for building performance evaluation by addressing the users' risk in health and safety aspects. The BPRT is developed from the result of a rating index using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. 12 facilities management (FM) experts and practitioners were involved in the rating process. The subjective weightings are analysed using the AHP computer software, the Expert Choice 11. The establishment of the BPRT was introduced as an aid of improvement towards the current performance assessment of HEB by emerging the concept of building performance and risk into a numerical strategic approac

Significance of Attaining Users’ Feedback in Building Performance Assessment

Generally, building is a structure that provides basic shelter for the humans to conduct general activities. In common prose, the purpose of buildings is to provide humans a comfortable working and living space and protected from the extremes of climate. However, a building usage is depends on the lifespan and the change of rate effected on their impact on efficiency of use. Hence, more attention needs to be emphasized on the performance of buildings as the changes are not static over time. This paper highlights the concept and requirements in evaluating building performance. Exploration on the concept of building performance is also addressed on the purposes of building performance and the link of performance towards the end-users and incorporating their feedback. It concludes that obtaining users’ feedback is vital in building performance and the requirements of assessment must outline the performance criteria and mandates in such building