Maintenance management of high rise buildings in Malaysia: A preliminary study in Klang Valley

Large highrise building is relatively complicated in maintenance. This paper presents the preliminary finding of a study on the building maintenance management of selected large highrise buildings in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Four highrise buildings with a floor number ranging from 20 to 88 floors and a total floor area from 585,527 to 4,252,000 square feet were investigated. Information on maintenance policy including the type of maintenance conducted, the existence policy and budget is collected through unstructured interviews. The paper concludes that a clear maintenance policy does not exist yet in the maintenance of highrise buildings

Sustainable strategy of health and safety assessment in high rise commercial buildings

In Malaysia scenario, various obstacles have to be faced by the building maintenance teams controlling all activities related to the high rise office building and its system. The crucial issue is to face serious problems with health and safety aspect of the building. This study aims to evaluate the health and safety performance of high rise office buildings, using a basic assessment method. An assessment method based on a hierarchy of building performance indicators concerning the quality of design factor and management factor with five attributes such as architectural design, building services design, the surrounding environment, operation and maintenance, and facilities management. Eleven high rise office buildings were randomly selected in Klang Valley, Malaysia and assessed through site inspections, desk searches, and interviewed facilities management personnel (FM), outsourced contractors/consultants (OS), building owners (BO) as well as (T) tenants. A performance analysis was conducted to examine and compare the overall health and safety performance of the buildings. The results had shown that there were significant variations in health and safety conditions across buildings, although they are situated within a single locality. After describing the current situation and problems, this paper concludes that most of the variations in building health and safety conditions were attributed to differences in building management systems rather than building designs. It is envisaged that further research can be conducted to investigate the relationship between building performance and extraneous factors, such as building age, management structure, and scale of development

Building maintenance policy for office high rise buildings in Malaysia: A preliminary study in Klang valley

Large high rise building is relatively complicated in maintenance. The value of buildings depends on the quality, safety and service of the maintenance policy standard provided and implemented in them. Building maintenance policy standard involves obtaining maximum benefit from the investment made on the maintenance activities. This paper presents the preliminary finding of a study on the building maintenance policy standard of selected large high rise buildings in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Seven office high rise buildings were investigated. Information on maintenance policy, including the type of maintenance conducted, the existence policy and budget, is collected through unstructured interviews. Maintenance in buildings in Malaysia is on the increase regardless of size, type, location, and ownership. The current maintenance policy procedures in Malaysia are however based on house rule and contract agreement. The weaknesses in the current procedures are the primary problems because they do not explicitly link maintenance needs with building performance with respect to the building users. The building users measure the performance of a building with various criteria. The condition of a building is just one of those criteria. This research establishes the need for a building maintenance policy that is based on the concept of building’s value in the effort to lead towards the optimization of building maintenance system. Maintenance policy standard that is value based allows users to be proactively put at the centre of maintenance management during decision making processes and takes into consideration both the objective and subjective requirements of users. The paper concludes that a clear maintenance policy does not exist yet in the maintenance of high rise buildings

Building maintenance policy issues in high rise commercial buildings

At present, high rise commercial building is quite complex in implementing a building maintenance policy. The quality, safety and service are the criteria of the building maintenance policy which should be provided and implemented in the high rise commercial buildings in order to sustain their value and economics. It also can benefit to the investment aspect as well as the maintenance activities. The purpose of this paper is to look at the implementation of the building maintenance policy in building maintenance management of high rise commercial buildings in Malaysia. Seven high rise office buildings were investigated through randomly selection in Klang Valley, Malaysia. This study attempts to provide a perspective of in-house building maintenance personnel and outsourced consultant as well as contractors on the maintenance policy practiced in building maintenance management of high rise office buildings through unstructured interviews. This paper presents the preliminary finding of a study on the building maintenance policy issues in the particular buildings. The current maintenance policy procedures in Malaysia are however based on house rule and contract agreement. The weaknesses in the current procedures are the primary problems because they do not explicitly link maintenance needs with performance management, strategic management and facilities management. The results had shown that the scope of building maintenance implemented varies from one building to another. This implies the quality of maintenance is not consistent especially in building performance aspect. The most important finding is that the building maintenance policy standard is not available in all buildings. This research establishes the need to develop a standard of building maintenance policy in high rise commercial building to be enforced legally in order to ensure the consistency of quality, safety and service to end users as well as publics all the time. As a conclusion, building maintenance policy can be a tool in order to measure and value the quality of the maintenance and operation processes improvement link with performance management, strategic management and facilities managemen

The potential of low energy earth pipe cooling in hot and humid Malaysia

This paper presents a study on the performance of Low Energy Earth Pipe Cooling in Malaysia which has hot and humid climate throughout the year. The increasing demand of air-conditioning for cooling purposes motivates this investigation in search for better cooling alternative. The passive technology, where the ground was used as a heat sink to produce cooler air, has not been investigated systematically in hot and humid countries. Therefore, in this work, air and soil temperatures were measured on a test site in Kuala Lumpur. At 1m underground, the result is most significant, where the soil temperature are 6oC and 9oC lower than the maximum ambient temperature during wet and dry season, respectively. Polyethylene pipes were then buried around 0.5m, 1.0m and 1.5m underground and temperature reduction between inlet and outlet were compared in two different seasons; wet and dry seasons. A significant temperature reduction was found in these pipes: up to 6.4oC and 6.9oC depending on the season of the year. The results have shown the potential of Earth Pipe in providing low energy cooling in Malaysia. The temperature reduction is enough to help reduce escalating energy consumption in Malaysia

Maintenance management of kariah masjid: A preliminary study on the technical background of masjid’s maintenance staff in Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur

Although maintenance works are normally outsourced, the officer in charge of maintenance of a masjid should have a basic technical background in building maintenance management. This is essential so that the maintenance problems are correctly identified for communication with top management as well as for follow-up maintenance work by appointed contractors. This paper presents the preliminary finding of a study on the technical background of masjid official responsible in building maintenance of selected masjids kariah in Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The finding may be used in drafting a suitable training module for them

Fire risk assessment of heritage building - perspectives of building stakeholders

Heritage building is very important in preserving the culture and to the tourism potential. Hence, the proper budget allocation to the prevention of fire loss is critical. Budget allocation is normally based on fire risk assessment. The assessment is interpreted based on the perception of stakeholders. Using structured interview and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) this study identifies and explains the diversity of fire risk perception of stakeholder

Fire risk assessment of heritage building – perspectives of regulatory authority, restorer and building stakeholder

This paper examines the perspectives of different parties involved in fire management/risks/protection system of heritage building. A survey questionnaire was developed based on the identified criteria of fire risks for heritage buildings in Malaysia. The survey questionnaire was administered to Fire Rescue Department Malaysia (FRDM) personnel, consultant and contractor, maintenance personnel (representing stakeholder). The data were analysed based on pair-wise comparison. It was found the perceptions of different parties differed from one another