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Operation and maintenance (O&M) processes projects such as identification, assessment, planning and execution, embody a variety of standards such as technical (method of statement), environmental, economic (campus development) and social (health and wellbeing). Because these standards have proven to be challenging to integrate, local governments are increasingly experimenting with social innovation (SI) as a bottom-up form of standard integration. This study aims to apply the concept of SI to the O&M processes of facilities management at polytechnics in Malaysia to identify problems with conventional working practices in this area and to recommend potential solutions.

The paper reviews evidence that conventional working methods generate significant problems related to paper-based forms, improper database management and flawed decision-making processes. Because of the lack knowledge about different ways of how standard integration is achieved, the comparison of three polytechnic institutions which are Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology (SPCEET) in USA as well as Seberang Perai Polytechnic, Pulau Pinang (PSP) in Malaysia shares the ambition to realise standard integration of O&M through SI.

The findings reveal that SI leads to four ways of standard integration: computerised maintenance management system, online customer complaint, electronic form and relational database. Application of the concept of SI reveals the need for more sophisticated management solutions in the O&M processes of facilities management.

These standard integration arrangements unfortunately seem to mainly contribute to greater alignment between standard rather than true standard integration. The concept of SI will guide future improvements and developments in maintenance management systems to fulfil requirements in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of a study carried out to identify and analyse which potential subject areas may have impact on developments in the field of building maintenance (BM). That is, it is intended to contribute to the integration of new approaches so that building maintenance management (BMM) becomes as automated, digital and intelligent or smartness as possible in the near future.

The research approach has resulted in a theory that is essentially based on a qualitative design. The route followed was a literature review, involving the collection, analysis and interpretation of carefully selected information, mostly from recently published records. The data assembled and the empirical experience itself made it possible to present a comprehensive viewpoint and some future outlooks.

Five thematic areas considered as potentially impactful for BM developments have been highlighted, analysed and generically labelled as thematic base words, which are monitoring, automation, digitalisation, intelligence and smart. It is believed that these may be aspects that will lay the groundwork for a much more advanced and integrated agenda, featured by a high-tech vision.

This is thought to be a different way of looking at the problem, as it addresses five current issues together. Trendy technological aspects are quite innovative and advantageous for BMM, providing opportunities not yet widely explored and boosting the paradigm shift.

This paper investigates how companies become resilient to supply chain (SC) piracy through using transactional and relational governance mechanisms to develop strategies effective in environments characterized by weak regulative institutions and mistrust.

This study developed case studies of nine large manufacturers with operations in Brazil.

The companies employed transactional and relational governance mechanisms to learn from past incidents, anticipate, and respond to the threat of SC piracy, becoming more resilient over time. Transactional governance mechanisms reduced risk triggers through technology, while relational governance mechanisms enhanced trust between SC and non-SC members, allowing the members to build social capital.

The authors provide practical guidance for managers and policymakers in developing risk management strategies based on technology and collaboration to reduce SC piracy in environments characterized by mistrust.

SC piracy is a serious problem for global operations and SCs in many low-cost manufacturing locations. Besides the cost and service level consequences, the authors also highlight worker safety consequences, including the potential for kidnapping, psychological trauma, injuries, and death.

This study focuses on the little-researched topic of SC piracy. The authors examine the negative effects of a weak institutional environment, while most prior research focuses on the positive effects of a strong institutional environment. The authors position transactional and relational governance mechanisms as essential elements of SC risk resilience.

The construction industry’s daily processes demand heavy data usage and communication between project participants to meet client requirements. Thus, the application of information technology in project implementation has been increasing in the construction sector (CS) lately. However, the same cannot be seen in public sectors responsible for implementing government projects in South Africa. This study aimed to investigate the causes and effects of the underutilisation of information communication technology (ICT) in the building section of a public sector in a municipality in South Africa.

A qualitative approach was adopted for the study, using a public sector in one of the municipalities as a case study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted among the building unit workers, using unstructured interview questions. The data collected were analysed using the ATLAS.ti software.

The findings indicate a lack of understanding of existing and newly available ICT software and hardware technology among staff within the building technology due to lack of digitalisation in construction projects implementation, inadequate system upgrades, lack of adequate ICT resources, lack of financial resources for internet and software application subscriptions and lack of ICT training leading. The issues mentioned above have led to the outsourcing of projects professionals, slow pace of electronic emails, untrained professionals, usage of different and unlicensed software, resulting in the underutilisation of ICT within the whole building section. This change also adversely affects all officials, especially the junior officials who have graduated using the most recent ICT technology during their studies.

The building department of only one public sector was used for the study; therefore, the findings may not be generalisable. The case study public sector’s name is withheld for confidentiality purposes.

Adequate change management and continuous development, combined with the allocation of proper resources, would be necessary for all staff members. Enormous investments had to be made in the ICT equipment by providing a sufficient budget in the building section of the public sectors. The building section within public sectors should provide change management to all aged skills staff by attending seminars to learn new ICT technology applied within its work environment.

The study established the causes of the underutilisation of ICT in the CS, especially in the public work departments and municipalities, and how this contributes to service delivery.

Despite the growing attention on the relevance of improved building management systems with cognition in recent years in the architecture, engineering, construction and operation (AECO) community, no review has been conducted to understand the human-environment interaction features of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and digital twins (DTs) in developing the concept of a cognitive building (CB). Thus, this paper aims to review existing studies on CPS and DTs for CB to propose a comprehensive system architecture that considers human-environment interactions.

Scientometric analysis and content analysis were adopted for this study.

The scientometric analysis of 1,042 journal papers showed the major themes of CPS/DTs for CB, and these can be categorized into three key technologies to realize CB in the AECO community: CPS, DTs and cognitive computing (CC). Content analysis of 44 relevant publications in the built environment assisted in understanding and evidently confirming the claim of this study on the integration of CPS and DTs for CB in construction by also involving the CC. It is found and confirmed that CB can be realized with CPS and DTs along with the CC. A CB system architecture (CBSA) is proposed from the three key technologies considering the human-environment interactions in the loop. The study discovered the potential applications of the CBSA across the building lifecycle phases, including the design, construction and operations and maintenance, with the potential promise of endowing resilience, intelligence, greater efficiency and self-adaptiveness. Based on the findings of the review, four research directions are proposed: human-environment interactions, CB for sustainable building performance, CB concept for modular buildings and moving beyond CB.

This study stands out for comprehensively surveying the intellectual core and the landscape of the general body of knowledge on CPS/DTs for CB in the built environment. It makes a distinctive contribution to knowledge as it does not only propose CBSA by integrating CPS and DTs along with CC but also suggests some potential practical applications. These may require expert judgments and real case examples to enhance reproducibility and validation.

This paper aims to identify the different system approach using Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology that is equipped with decision making processes. Maintenance planning and management are integral components of the construction sector, serving the broader purpose of post-construction activities and processes. However, as Precast Concrete (PC) construction projects increase in scale and complexity, the interconnections among these activities and processes become apparent, leading to planning and performance management challenges. These challenges specifically affect the monitoring of façade components for corrective and preventive maintenance actions.

The concept of maintenance planning for façades, along with the main features of information and communication technology tools and techniques using building information modeling technology, is grounded in the analysis of numerous literature reviews in PC building scenarios.

This research focuses on an integrated system designed to analyze information and support decision-making in maintenance planning for PC buildings. It is based on robust data collection regarding concrete façades' failures and causes. The system aims to provide appropriate planning decisions and minimize the risk of façade failures throughout the building's lifetime.

The study concludes that implementing a research framework to develop such a system can significantly enhance the effectiveness of maintenance planning for façade design, construction and maintenance operations.

This paper aims to evaluate the level of compliance of fire safety with the legal requirements in Malaysia government hospital buildings by evaluating via fire risk management.

Five government hospitals were selected. These five hospitals were selected due to the location of Penang, which is one of the fast-growing states in Malaysia (Salleh, 2019; Ebekozien, 2019). This state is the second most densely populated state after Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, with an average distribution of 1,490 persons per square km. This higher population caused the higher demand on the health-care services by the public (DOSM, 2016). The observation and building audit processes are as described. Hundreds of photos were taken for qualitative analysis, and all fire safety elements were measured for the descriptive analysis for each hospital. The framework of audit elements is created based on the Life Safety Code: NFPA 101 (2018), UBBL 1984: Part VII (Fire Requirements) and Part VIIII (Fire Alarms, Fire Detection, Fire Extinguishment and Fire Fighting Access). The cross-sectional descriptive evaluation is conducted in the case studies building in accordance with Life Safety Code of NFPA, also known as NFPA 101. To conduct the study, the information needed to assess the fire safety status was extracted from the CFSES software based on the NFPA 101 standard and prepared and compiled by the researcher as a checklist. In the next stage, gathered information was analysed using Computerised Fire Safety Evaluation System (CFSES) software. This method was developed based on the NFPA 101 standard and evaluated the fire risk from four dimensions of containment, extinguishment, people movement and general safety. This software gives the risk assessment results in three areas of fire control, exits and general safety. To assess the fire risk of the commercial buildings after entering the background information (height, age, number of stories, etc.) in the software, the software first calculates the score that the building should obtain in the three aspects of fire control, exit routes and general safety (minimum score required).

The utmost zones in the case studies (44.3%) occupied by limited mobility are located at low-rise buildings or at the first floor to third floor of the hospital buildings. Hospitals managements lacked in creating the maximum exit route and egress the occupants to disclosed the building during evacuation, it correlates to the patients' mobility positions strategy to assign their categories that fell on effortless mobilisation. Surveyed hospitals were built with the non-combustible materials, even though four of the case studies were built before 1984. Hospitals were equipped with hazard separations and vertical smoke pores, and in most of the zones, sprinkler system is installed only in the corridors, equipped with communication system and system of communication with fire and relief organisations and has a fire detection and alarm system throughout the building. Results of fire risk assessment on four groups of elements were tested via CFSES revealed from 122 zones of surveyed hospitals; 102 or 84% of zones give the highest failed rate to comply the NFPA 101 requirements in terms of people movement in the building. The high-occupied Penang General Hospital contributed as the highest case study for not complying with the minimum requirements in all dimensions: people movement elements (41 zones), fire containment (31 zones), fire extinguisher (31 zones) and general safety (20). Fire extinguishment (62 zones) recorded the highest numbers of zones that complied with NFPA 101 (2013). The overall results of the fire risk assessment suggested that in terms of the fire control, egress and general safety aspects, the fire risk assessment score was unacceptable (failed) in all hospital buildings studied, and in the three areas mentioned, the general safety, egress/exit routes and fire control were in a worse status in terms of the score obtained in the software. None of the surveyed hospital received the minimum safety score in the three areas mentioned. The involvement of Emergency Response Team is crucial to overcome this egress or fire exit requirement and parameters.

Several limitations exist in this research that cannot be controlled. Firstly, the occupancy rates only determined during peak hour. Accessibility into hospital compound permitted only during daytime. Secondly, the fire safety audits and fire safety risk management in this research are not being conducted by a professional architect or engineer and as a result must be relied on the direct inspection checklist to create valid results. Thirdly, this research has some limitations which need to be noted but does not affect the robustness of the study’s findings. This study focuses only on five selected public hospitals in one state of the northern region of Malaysia and excluded data gathering from all other parts of Malaysia. The perception of hospital operators regarding fire safety issues from different state hospitals may allow comparisons.

The findings of this paper should make a key practical contribution to the body of knowledge. In practice, the proposed framework should expand the knowledge of public hospital fire safety management plan concerning the level of fire safety compliance with the requirements in government hospital buildings and develop a fire safety management plan framework for government hospital buildings.

This paper develops an early framework component related to the occupants’ safety which gives the basis for future research in hospital fire safety settings as it imparts early investigation into the consequence of investigating the phenomenon from the operators’ perspective as an attempt to improve public health-care fire safety performance in hospitals.

This paper has created a few measurement tools that can be applied among public hospital buildings stakeholders to perform the fire safety audit and risk management and rate the performance of Fire Safety Management in public hospitals.

This paper presents a survey of research into interactive robotic systems for the purpose of identifying the state of the art capabilities as well as the extant gaps in this emerging field. Communication is multimodal. Multimodality is a representation of many modes chosen from rhetorical aspects for its communication potentials. The author seeks to define the available automation capabilities in communication using multimodalities that will support a proposed Interactive Robot System (IRS) as an AI mounted robotic platform to advance the speed and quality of military operational and tactical decision making.

This review will begin by presenting key developments in the robotic interaction field with the objective of identifying essential technological developments that set conditions for robotic platforms to function autonomously. After surveying the key aspects in Human Robot Interaction (HRI), Unmanned Autonomous System (UAS), visualization, Virtual Environment (VE) and prediction, the paper then proceeds to describe the gaps in the application areas that will require extension and integration to enable the prototyping of the IRS. A brief examination of other work in HRI-related fields concludes with a recapitulation of the IRS challenge that will set conditions for future success.

Using insights from a balanced cross section of sources from the government, academic, and commercial entities that contribute to HRI a multimodal IRS in military communication is introduced. Multimodal IRS (MIRS) in military communication has yet to be deployed.

Multimodal robotic interface for the MIRS is an interdisciplinary endeavour. This is not realistic that one can comprehend all expert and related knowledge and skills to design and develop such multimodal interactive robotic interface. In this brief preliminary survey, the author has discussed extant AI, robotics, NLP, CV, VDM, and VE applications that is directly related to multimodal interaction. Each mode of this multimodal communication is an active research area. Multimodal human/military robot communication is the ultimate goal of this research.

A multimodal autonomous robot in military communication using speech, images, gestures, VST and VE has yet to be deployed. Autonomous multimodal communication is expected to open wider possibilities for all armed forces. Given the density of the land domain, the army is in a position to exploit the opportunities for human–machine teaming (HMT) exposure. Naval and air forces will adopt platform specific suites for specially selected operators to integrate with and leverage this emerging technology. The possession of a flexible communications means that readily adapts to virtual training will enhance planning and mission rehearsals tremendously.

Interaction, perception, cognition and visualization based multimodal communication system is yet missing. Options to communicate, express and convey information in HMT setting with multiple options, suggestions and recommendations will certainly enhance military communication, strength, engagement, security, cognition, perception as well as the ability to act confidently for a successful mission.

The objective is to develop a multimodal autonomous interactive robot for military communications. This survey reports the state of the art, what exists and what is missing, what can be done and possibilities of extension that support the military in maintaining effective communication using multimodalities. There are some separate ongoing progresses, such as in machine-enabled speech, image recognition, tracking, visualizations for situational awareness, and virtual environments. At this time, there is no integrated approach for multimodal human robot interaction that proposes a flexible and agile communication. The report briefly introduces the research proposal about multimodal interactive robot in military communication.