Critical success factors of collaborative approach in delivering sustainable construction

The essential aspect of sustainability in construction lead the complexities and involvement of multi parties in the construction project as well as its process. Conflicts of interests may appear in the process. Collaborative approach is essential for supporting decision making in delivering sustainable construction. This research identifies the collaboration critical factors. Scatter plot of mean and standard deviation analysis is done to rank the criticality of each collaboration factors in delivering sustainable construction. Eventually, factor analysis is done to identify the similarities between all the factors. There are twelve (12) factors identified from previous studies. Among all the collaboration factors, coordination among project stakeholders is identified as the most critical in delivering sustainable construction and followed by sharing responsibilities and mutual support. Based from factor analysis, five new factors of collaborative approach have been found

Malaysian regulators’ ranking of PPP contract governance skills

Purpose–The purpose of this study is to explore the skills required by regulatory agencies for effectivegovernance of public-private partnership (PPP) contracts from the perspective of Malaysian regulators. Thereis a growing literature indicating that there is poor public sector expertise in managing PPP projects.Design/methodology/approach–The study, being an exploratory one, relied on a questionnaire survey ofthe Malaysian PPP unit (UKAS) and five Malaysian regulatory agencies responsible for regulating servicedelivery across a number of sectors.Findings–The results of the exploratory factor analysis returned six factor groupings, indicating that themost important skills are procurement, auditing and forensic accounting, lifecycle costing, sector-specific,negotiation analysis and performance management. It was also found that academic qualifications, profession,years of experience and the regulatory agency had no mediating effect on the rankings.Practical implications–The findings show that infrastructure regulation training programs should betailored to reflect regional and country-specific characteristics. This is because a similar study with a globalisedset of respondents gave a different result from the current study.Originality/value–There is a growing trend towards remunicipalisations and contract cancellationsglobally. This is the very outcome that regulatory agencies were created to prevent. Studies includinggovernment reports are increasingly pointing in the direction of poor skills set among public sector staffmanaging PPPs. This lack of capacity has resulted in poor oversight, which now threatens the sustainability ofservice provision

Urban heritage conservation through redevelopment strategies: a case study of Kuala Lumpur

Towns in Malaysia are rich in built heritage from colonial days and the symbiotic existence of Chinese and Malays, which dominated urban areas. The nostalgic combination of old and new quaintly describes our towns. On the other hand, pressure for redevelopment is increasing in the face of fast-changing, ominously globalizing world today to create a global image for a city centre. However, as shown by vast literature, the success of global cities relies increasingly on the distinctiveness of place than on faceless city. Thus it becomes critical to find a balance between conservation and redevelopment in order to preserve identity. This paper addresses redevelopment of old inner-city areas through adaptive reuse of traditional shophouses in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Conservation is undoubtedly possible through redevelopment. Using the case study of the city centre of Kuala Lumpur, we examine the public policies as an instrument to redevelopment within the context of conservation. We look at the roles played by local government in conservation in relation to these development policies. The findings suggest that various development policies partake in conservation of urban heritage, despite great demands for total redevelopment. Designated policies to conservation, on the other hand, have yet to prove their efficacy, including the latest heritage act

Evaluating stakeholders’ preferences: Reconciling heritage and sustainability in Kuala Lumpur traditional areas

Unchecked redevelopments are destroying our unique multi-cultural heritage. The subsistence of this built heritage is threatened by demolition, unsympathetic changes and rapid redevelopment pace. Escalating market value increasingly replaces these buildings with newer and higher density structures. Most often, the decisions pertaining to traditional shophouse redevelopment are based on guidelines inherited from the mono-cultural British system, whose perspectives narrowly represent the multi-cultural society in Malaysia. On top of that, involvement of direct stakeholders, namely owners and tenants, are minimal in the decision process. This paper is part of an ongoing research to provide an objective evaluation for traditional shophouse redevelopment, incorporating multiple stakeholders’ preferences. It focuses on exploring conflicts and values of the stakeholders using Multiple Criteria Analysis, or MCA technique. Using a common MCA technique, the Analytical Hierarchy Process, or AHP, stakeholders’ preferences on a set of criteria for redevelopment decision are derived and compared. It is found that stakeholders’ preferences are dissimilar even within their homogenous groups. This study contributes to discovering the potential of MCA to increase transparency in redevelopment decisions involving built heritage and multiple stakeholders

Identification of coordination factors affecting building projects performance

Construction projects performance requires improvement to fulfil the complexity of the stakeholders’ needs and expectations. Coordination process is proposed as an efficient solution for weak performance of construction projects. Therefore, coordination factors are vital in ensuring a successful implementation of all project phases. This study aimed to identify and prioritise coordination factors that influence the performance of building projects in Malaysian context. A vast body of literature on coordination process was reviewed and resulted in 53 coordination factor. Three rounds of Delphi technique were conducted. The most effective coordination factors were ranked based on the Relative Importance Index (RII) such as Scheduling (RII = 0.97), Quality assurance plan (RII = 0.93), and all parties’ participation in plans (RII = 0.89). These coordination factors have fulfilled the research gap and provided better management and higher performance for project parties. The results offer insightful perspectives to define the most effective coordination factors, for addressing the dependency between project tasks and the parties to enhance project performance

A Comprehensive Guide to Different Fracturing Technologies: A Review

Hydraulic fracturing has made the production of gas more economical. Shale gas possesses the potential to arise as a main natural gas source worldwide. It has been assessed that the top 42 countries, including the U.S., are predicted to own 7299 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of technically recoverable shale gas resources. The main goal of this paper is to serve as a guide of different shale gas extraction methods. The significance of these methods and possible pros and cons are determined. Each technique was explained with the support of literature review. Specifically, this paper revealed that some fracking methods such as pulsed arc electrohydraulic discharges (PAED), plasma stimulation and fracturing technology (PSF), thermal (cryogenic) fracturing, enhanced bacterial methanogenesis, and heating of rock mass are at the concept stage for conventional and other unconventional resources. Thus, these found to be significant for stimulating natural gas wells, which provides very good production results. This paper also discovered that fracking remains the recommended technique used by the oil and gas industries

Industry Revolution IR 4.0: Future Opportunities and Challenges in Construction Industry

The future of construction industry development is the approach of the component-industrialization, the construction-breakdown, design-identical, construction-assembled, operation-data technique to maximize the life cycle value. This paper presents a general idea of Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 with the introduction descriptions of important aspects in Construction Industry (CI) development. The aim is to define and show possible research areas connected with the IR 4.0 into the CI. For this purpose, an analysis was made, based on the most recent literature, to point out actual needs in the CI in terms of its evolution into IR 4.0 level. It is shown that multidiscipline approaches are not investigated to create special rules, procedures and methods and know-how designed for introducing the principles of IR 4.0 in the CI. A popular from stakeholders in the CI understand how digitization is affecting each part of their trade, however, its practical applications are still in infancy stage. IR 4.0 concepts should be combined with construction production, novel expertise must be applied to the intellectual engineering of modern construction, enhance the level of incorporation, to achieve the sustainable development

Industry Revolution IR 4.0: Future Opportunities and Challenges in Construction Industry

The future of construction industry development is the approach of the component-industrialization, the construction-breakdown, design-identical, construction-assembled, operation-data technique to maximize the life cycle value. This paper presents a general idea of Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0 with the introduction descriptions of important aspects in Construction Industry (CI) development. The aim is to define and show possible research areas connected with the IR 4.0 into the CI. For this purpose, an analysis was made, based on the most recent literature, to point out actual needs in the CI in terms of its evolution into IR 4.0 level. It is shown that multidiscipline approaches are not investigated to create special rules, procedures and methods and know-how designed for introducing the principles of IR 4.0 in the CI. A popular from stakeholders in the CI understand how digitization is affecting each part of their trade, however, its practical applications are still in infancy stage. IR 4.0 concepts should be combined with construction production, novel expertise must be applied to the intellectual engineering of modern construction, enhance the level of incorporation, to achieve the sustainable development

A multivariable regression tool for embodied carbon footprint prediction in housing habitat

A novel embodied carbon prediction tool has been developed for conventionally constructed housing units. Single and double storey terraced, semi-detached and detached housing projects were evaluated by adoption of partial life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. The statistical technique of multivariable regression analysis was merged with LCA and building information modeling (BIM) for prediction of such environmental issue in housing sector. The assessment was limited to pre-use phase with LCA boundary of “cradle to site”. The criteria and requirements for a statistically consistent and efficient prediction tool were successfully satisfied with an acceptable average prediction error of less than ±5%. Based on very basic explanatory variables, the tool also helped to manage the barrier of huge data requirements for such environmental studies. The study is expected to act as a milestone and help the researchers and industry professionals for quick, effective and sustainable environmental assessment, decision making and solutions