Search results

Considers the effects of latent building defects and the contractual rights that exist when a defect is found, depending on the age of the building. Examines the various insurance options available – commercial property insurance, public liability insurance, and legal liability policies – as well as the latest developments in latent defect insurance and how this can be arranged. Concludes that building defects will continue to arise and that already available latent defects insurance may become a legislated necessity.

The main issues arising from the considerations on latent defects liability in the Latham Committee consultation paper pertain to: joint and several liability; limitation periods and prescription of actions; and transfer of clients′ rights. The Government is reluctant to bring about compulsory insurance and this is considered justifiable. Discusses the reasons. It is considered that an improved voluntary system is the only and better way forward. Positive steps should be taken by the Government to put in place equitable conditions under which a voluntary and improved building users′ insurance against latent defects cover can emerge.

Examines the respective concepts of collateral warranties and latent defects insurance, and the strengths and weaknesses of each arrangement. Discusses the objective or protecting owner and occupier, the collateral warranty matrix, building‐specific advantages of LDI, and recent events in the LDI market. Concludes that the inherent uncertainties in collateral warranties are likely to result in increased appreciation and demand for latent defects insurance.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key aspects of building defects performance cases in relation to the building components focusing on the government-owned buildings and to enhance government’s role to curb the building defects to reoccur.

The qualitative research method approach was adopted with a total of 5,243 specific building defects identified and accumulated from actual building projects and provided feedback on the defects associated with the Government of Malaysia’s owned buildings.

This paper statistically validates that building defects are a staid delinquent matter fronting the construction industry in Malaysia. This matter needs to be tacked by all the parties involved in the industry. This paper proposes a factual statistical statement that is proved to be a practical and suitable measurement in correcting building defects and preventing them from reoccurring.

Future research could focus on developing a defect performance measurement on real projects now focusing on private buildings as well.

The defects performance statistical measurement is anticipated to prove the problematic rate of defects occurrence on government-owned structures, as the key elements on the national defect preventive strategy which have to be taken into account.

The outcome of this paper is significant in its own right and serves as a platform for future research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast consumer laws in England and Australia in relation to residential building projects, and considers how the laws of England may be improved in light of the Australian laws.

The paper reviews consumer laws in both England and Australia, and examines the measures that are in place (or not) to protect consumers who engage builders or purchase a home that contains latent defects.

After comparing the laws of the two countries, the conclusion is made that English law could be improved by imposing regulations on builders, including by mandating the use of written contracts for building work which are required to contain particular terms, requiring builders to be licensed and insured, and by introducing a consumer‐friendly form of dispute resolution for home building disputes.

The paper recommends that there be law reform in England.

The paper provides (so far as the authors are aware) the first comparison of English and Australian consumer laws in relation to residential building work.

As SMT circuit boards continue to increase in complexity, the PCB manufacturer—in order to stay alive in an increasingly competitive market—will be forced to produce boards of the highest quality to meet marketplace performance standards. In addition, he will have to produce them economically at a profit. The complex board of today will be a subsystem tomorrow. It will certainly contain finer features, more embedded resistors, and will even exhibit analogue‐like and RF‐like features plus even more sophisticated networks. All of these developments are expected to have a strong impact on electrical testing techniques. This paper discusses the problems of increasing yields by means of better process control and higher quality testing for a changing spectrum of faults. The effects of both latent and immediate PCB faults are examined for various grades of products, including low grade commercial, commercial, ground‐based military, high rel. commercial, and high tech. military and commercial. Illustrations and tables are provided showing the impact of fault detection on product quality as well as the economic impact achieved for various levels of product quality by means of software SPC (statistical process control). The most important issue facing the PCB manufacturer in the 1990s is certain to be quality of product. This paper outlines strategies for the manufacturer to improve his process through improving the quality of electrical test and the provision of highly accurate fault data as well as the highest possible fault coverage.

Burn‐in is an engineering method extensively used to screen out infant mortality failure defects. Previous studies have attempted to determine the optimum burn‐in time and cost for a device or a system. However, for the mathematical model, many assumptions are inappropriate due to practical concerns, and for the cost model, the required costs are difficult to find. How to effectively determine the optimal burn‐in time and cost has perplexed manufacturers for quite some time. In the actual manufacturing process, a new electronic product is always extended from an old product, called the base product. By adopting the relationship between new product and base product, this study presents a neural network‐based approach to determine the optimal burn‐in time and cost without any assumptions. A case study of the production of a switch mode rectifier demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

The purpose of this study is to focus on identifying building elements with design defects and established the relationship between design defects and difficulties in carrying out maintenance works.

A total of four cases have been selected covering primary‐ and secondary‐level for both National and National‐type schools (commonly known as vernacular schools). Interviews with school management were carried out throughout the study to assess the common design defects in the buildings.

A list of the design defects that have caused high maintenance cost was tabulated. It could be concluded that the most common design defects are building façade and missing slot underneath the floor slab which led to more defects.

Only four schools in Penang, Malaysia were involved in this study. Data were gathered from the school management and maintenance personnel. No data have been obtained from the designers because difficulties in tracing the designers record since the school age are more than 20 years.

The study recommended that expert maintenance personnel shall be employed in the design stage to minimize design defects in school projects which in turn minimize the cost of building maintenance.

Safety and health of the students could be affected if there is no accurate measures being adopted to overcome the issue.

A very limited study has been carried out with regards to design maintenance for school buildings in Malaysia.

The new Consumer Protection Act, 1987 has three main objectives: