Search results

The largest share of a building maintenance budget goes towards preventing or repairing building defects. Also, building defects shorten a building’s lifetime, impact the user’s safety and health, prevent the buildings from performing their functions well and repairing building defects generates waste. Therefore, this study aims to specify the factors that affecting the number of building defects and how to reduce their negative impacts.

A case study was used as a research strategy and convergent parallel mixed methods were used as research design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently, followed by independent analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data, and then merged the two sets of results according to the procedure of using the convergent parallel design. Descriptive statistics analysed quantitative data, whilst qualitative data was analysed by the content analysis technique.

The findings of this study explored the factors that affect the number of defects in buildings, the significant factors were related to the building’s life cycle in terms of design, construction, operation and maintenance phase; relevant attributes were construction teams, building users and maintenance teams. The study also addressed the approaches to minimise the negative impacts of those factors. Their negative impacts mainly contributed to increased building defects that increase maintenance costs, affect users’ safety and health, reduce buildings’ lifespan and cause environmental impact due to resource extraction.

The existing studies have not adequately addressed the significant factors that affect the number of building defects. Also, emerging technologies and environmental sustainability considerations related to building defects have not been linked in previous related work. Therefore, the present study has contributed to filling this gap.

Although the handover stage is the key transition stage between the construction and operation, there is no critical overview of issues and research at the handover stage, hindering the achievement of sustainable development of buildings. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review the building handover-related issues and research in construction and facility management (FM) journals. The specific objectives of this study include: analyze the research trends and overview the handover-related publications; identify the major research topics on the handover of buildings; identify research gaps and propose future research directions.

This study opted for a four-step systematic review of papers from the well-known academic journals in the construction and FM respects.

The results first revealed the increasing research interest in the handover of buildings from the researchers. Moreover, the post-construction defects, poor information fidelity, poor interoperability between building information modeling (BIM) and FM technologies, and insufficient consideration of end users were identified as the most concerned challenges for a building handover. Furthermore, identifying and formalizing information requirements for handover, improving the handover process, and improving the interoperability between BIM and FM were solutions mostly emphasized by researchers.

As the first systematic review of building handover-related issues and research, this study is the building block for future research on this topic. The findings provide guidance for researchers in the construction and FM research community, and help them form useful collaboration for future research opportunities and find future research directions.

The identified significant challenges and potential solutions for a building handover could assist practitioners in making rational decisions on developing or adopting relevant technologies, and reshaping their management patterns and working processes. Moreover, the findings could be severed as evidence for policymakers to initiate policies, such as documents e-submission and timely updating BIMs, to achieve the vision of model-based project delivery.

This study contributed to the body of knowledge of sustainable development by providing a new insight to tackle the hindrance to the smooth transition from the construction to the operation.

Like in many other countries, in Sri Lanka, minimal attention is paid to the performance of a building after it has been taken over by its end-user. Hence, a gap often exists between the actual performance of the building and its predicted performance. This performance gap led to the origin of the Soft Landings (SL) framework by Building Services Research Information Association (BSRIA). The applications of SL have been studied only in contexts like Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, although optimal building performance is being discussed extensively all over the world. Thus, this paper aims to determine the possibility of applying SL to building construction projects in Sri Lanka.

Two rounds of expert interviews were conducted to collect data; they were analyzed using content analysis and later validated using pattern matching.

At a glance, the application of SL is welcoming as the performance gap in Sri Lankan buildings is significant. However, the existing practices encumber the application of certain aspects like three years post-construction aftercare. The actual application to the Sri Lankan context requires a modification to the periods specified for the SL stages in theory.

Adaptability of the SL framework has not been systematically researched in the context of a developing country yet. The enablers and barriers in the application of SL and the level of effort required in its implementation too have not been studied before. The research addressed this literature gap as well as the industry need.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the international significance of multi-owned developments (MODs), present an MOD life cycle conceptual model and review the range of identified peer-reviewed empirical research papers.

The paper utilises an exploratory qualitative methodology to collate and analyse literature focusing on MODs. From the 403 research papers identified 96 peer-reviewed empirical research papers specific to MODs were examined. A MOD life cycle model has been conceptualised to facilitate a content analysis of the reviewed papers.

The findings of this paper highlights the gaps in knowledge pertinent to MODs and outlines avenues for future research that argues for the need to develop a more holistic and multi-disciplinary research approach.

The research is based on reviewing published papers as identified using specific search terms.

The paper makes an important and innovative contribution to the body of knowledge by developing a MOD life cycle model and identifying the range and scope of peer-reviewed empirical research literature published on MODs. Understanding the MOD life cycle phases and the gaps in the literature can enable academics from a multitude of disciplines to enhance this field of inquiry in order to better understand this emergent property type.

Offsite construction (OSC) is a modern method of construction (MMC) that involves manufacturing and assembly of buildings. Industry 4.0-driven technological advancements have accelerated OSC uptake causing many skilled construction workers requiring re-skilling or up-skilling. Quantity surveyors currently play an important role throughout a construction project life cycle, and hence, their knowledge on OSC projects is vital for the continuity of quantity surveying (QS) profession. The purpose of this paper is to critically review QS education in an OSC perspective and to propose strategies for up-skilling.

This research includes a detailed literature review of QS and OSC to evaluate how OSC affects the QS profession. Publicly available information on the university websites on accredited QS and construction management degrees was reviewed to identify OSC and MMC references, specifically the content listing and learning outcomes.

Out of the 315 degrees offered by 157 universities, only 69 degrees in 32 universities refer to OSC or MMC. OSC concept is explicitly referred in subjects related to construction technology, production management, lean construction, digital construction and MMC. As such, the research suggests including lean production principles, OSC techniques and design philosophies such as design for manufacture and assembly be added to the QS curricula.

This research is a comprehensive desktop study that does not involve empirical data-based evaluation. Research findings inform strategies to improve QS education and professional competencies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind that evaluates accredited QS degrees and learning requirements in an OSC perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of Phase 1 of the research and to identify Australian agile software development organizations having such coexistence of agile and software configuration management (SCM) practices. This study employed “organization size” variable to study the phenomenon and used theory of Lean Thinking as a lens to analyse implementation variations of agile and SCM practices.

For this study, the research design was comprised of three phases. In Phase 1, a quantitative study using an online survey was performed to answer RQ using various statistical techniques. In Phase 2, an initial conceptual model based on a literature review was developed, and then a qualitative study was performed using one longitudinal case study. In Phase 3, another online survey was performed using various parametric statistical techniques to validate and generalize the findings of Phase 1 and 2 and the proposed SLAM traceability model. The scope of this paper is to discuss only Phase 1 and its associated findings.

The results of the analysis indicated that organizations, regardless of their size, frequently use agile practices for their software development operations. On the other hand, larger organizations use SCM practices comparatively more than medium and small organizations. However, traces of customized SCM process were found in most of the respondent (large, medium, and small) organizations, which indicates the coexistence of agile and SCM practices.

As there is no known listing or database available for such specialized criteria, a non-probabilistic sampling method was used, in the sense that the selection of members of the sample was arbitrary and subjective instead of a non-random selection from the pool of all agile practitioners in the field.

By using the quantitative method approach, this study aims to generate empirical evidence to contribute to the body of knowledge in the relevant areas. On the practical side, this research can also provide support to IT businesses in general, and software development organizations in particular, with the streamlining of the internal operational environment for the facilitation of an adaptable process and the resulting coexistence of value-added agile and SCM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the principles for managing precast concrete (PC) building in the context of Malaysian maintenance practice. A large number of clients/contractors in a PC building maintenance project faced many issues due to poor service delivery, less-competent contractor and defect repetition. Meanwhile, conventional method practices tend to be ineffective in Malaysian PC building.

Case studies were used to investigate the practice of maintenance management with eight professional engineers working in the Malaysian PC building maintenance departments.

Interviews were held with these departments and content analysis was used to identify themes that demonstrate effective PC building maintenance management practice. The frontline approaches (new system development with the integration of BIM) and underlying approach such as decision making in defect diagnosis are presented to address the maintenance management problems on PC building such as defect repetition and less-competent contractor.

The underlying approaches include sustaining existing maintenance quality and providing decision making in diagnosis support while the frontline approaches include the use of emerging technologies, efficient control of building performance-based design and monitor the defect component operation in maintenance.

The current maintenance management method affects the efficiency of the complex, high-rise industrialised building system (IBS) building maintenance management projects in Malaysia. The usage of a conventional system (paper-based reports/unsystematic database) has various drawbacks, such as IBS component aesthetic and structural defects which occur repeatedly in the building and maintenance of conventional building, lack of integration between maintenance systems and lack of the intelligent capabilities of linking defect diagnosis operations in maintenance affecting various building elements with IBS component defect knowledge. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the development of a mechanism to improve IBS component defect knowledge transfer in IBS building maintenance projects through the integration of building information modelling (BIM).

Eight clients/maintenance contractors were selected based on the major problems of using a conventional system to investigate the maintenance management practices in each complex and high-rise IBS building.

The findings indicated that several computerised systems such as Building Automation System and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System are used by a client/maintenance contractor. Moreover, BIM technology awareness was found to be limited, with no implementation in IBS building maintenance till now. The results of this case study were used as a foundation for the development of a prototype system using Computerised Maintenance Management System, Expert System and BIM.

The development of this new system improves IBS component diagnosis knowledge integration with the BIM technology.

The current maintenance management method has affected the efficiency of the building facility management at Polytechnics. Many issues such as poor service delivery, inadequate finance, poor maintenance planning and maintenance backlogs have emerged due to the usage of conventional method application (paper-based form and unsystematic database. The purpose of this paper is to review existing literature and case studies project of the technologies in maintenance management at Polytechnic, and subsequently to identify the challenge in improving the current maintenance management technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to review existing literature and case studies project of the technologies in maintenance management at Polytechnic, and subsequently to identify the challenges of information and communication technology (ICT) implementation for strategic defect diagnosis and decision-making in improving the current maintenance management technologies. Eight Polytechnics are selected on the basis of the major problems of using the conventional method in the comparison to investigate the maintenance management practices in each Polytechnic. There are around 32 Polytechnics in Malaysia and most are using conventional methods.

The findings reveal the need for a more sophisticated maintenance management system that provides guidelines for decision-making processes with the implementation of ICT. The interview results also reveal irregularities within the Malaysian Polytechnics’ maintenance management database. The system architecture and the information system prototype are presented to integrate the information database and maintenance management processes in improving the building diagnosis approach and decision-making process for managing building maintenance.

This new system is expected to become the successful technology in assisting the maintenance contractors, clients and developer for effective management of maintenance defects at Polytechnic.

Hospital building maintenance management constitutes a pertinent issue of global concern for all healthcare stakeholders. In Malaysia, the maintenance management of hospital buildings is instrumental to the Government’s goal of providing efficient healthcare services to the Government's citizenry. However, there is a paucity of studies that have comprehensively explored all dimensions of hospital building defects in relation to maintenance management. Consequently, this study seeks to evaluate the defects of hospital buildings in Malaysia with the aim of proffering viable solutions for the rectification and prevention of the issue.

The study utilised a quantitative approach for data collection.

The findings indicated that cracked floors, floor tile failures, wall tiles failure, blocked water closets, and damaged windows were some of the flaws that degrade hospital buildings. The study’s outcomes reveal that defects not only deface the aesthetic appearance of hospital buildings but also inhibit the functionality of the buildings and depreciate the overall satisfaction.

Considering the indispensable role of hospital buildings in the grand scheme of healthcare service provision and ensuring the well-being of people, the issue of defects necessitates an urgent re-evaluation of the maintenance management practices of hospital buildings in Malaysia. Previous studies on the maintenance management of hospital buildings in Malaysia have focused primarily on design, safety, and construction.

This is particularly important because defects in hospital buildings across the country have recently led to incessant ceiling collapses, fire outbreaks, ceiling, roof collapses, and other structural failures. These problems are typically the result of poor maintenance management, exacerbated by poor design and construction. These disasters pose significant risks to the lives of hospital building users.

This study offers invaluable insights for maintenance organisations and maintenance department staff who are genuinely interested in improving hospital buildings’ maintenance management to optimise staff's performance and enhance the user satisfaction of hospital buildings in Malaysia and globally.