Despite the enactment of the National Heritage Act and establishment of the National Heritage Department in Malaysia, many heritage buildings still remain in poor conditions with signs of serious building defects threatening their survival because Legislations related to heritage buildings in the country do not sufficiently address the issue of maintenance and its management in the conservation of heritage buildings thereby resulting to poor maintenance management practices which eventually lead to deterioration of the buildings. More so, despite the rhetoric of the significance of maintenance management in the conservation of heritage buildings in Malaysia, there is still inadequate guidance about how maintenance should be envisaged, managed and integrated with other key management activities in the context of heritage building conservation. This paper is part of an ongoing research aimed at developing a maintenance management framework for conservation of heritage buildings in Malaysia. The proposed conceptual framework will provide a holistic guidance and understanding of the maintenance management practices to be adopted in the conservation of heritage buildings in Malaysia. This would enable custodians of heritage buildings in Malaysia to evaluate their maintenance management practices in relation to best practices and be able to re-position their maintenance management approaches to best practice standard.
Heritage buildings are regarded as highly valuable assets to the tourism industry because of their strong influence in motivating foreign tourists to visit the country. The tourism industry generate significant revenue (GNI of RM56.5 billion in 2010) to the Malaysian economy thereby making the tourism industry the second most important sectors of the economy. Foreign tourists are attracted to these buildings due to their cultural uniqueness, high historical and architectural values, and the strong desire to see something different. Hence, it became paramount to conserve these buildings in order to prolong their life span and functions. As buildings aged, they will be exposed to serious building defects and deterioration. To date, Malaysian government has been spending quite a huge amount of money in conserving heritage buildings in the country but the buildings keep deteriorating just few years after major conservation works on the buildings. To this regard, this paper is aimed at examining the maintenance management practice for heritage buildings in Malaysia. The study will focus mainly on maintenance units of gazette heritage buildings in Malaysia. In-depth literature review, questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews followed by physical condition survey at selected sites will be used to achieve the set objectives. Among the expected outcomes are the listings of heritage building maintenance management best practice criteria. The outcomes would enable custodians of heritage sites to effectively evaluate, plan and implement their maintenance management programme, thereby able to expect savings in costs and time in future conservation works.
The essence of building maintenance is to increase the service life of a building by delaying deterioration, decay and failure. Building maintenance must therefore be considered as a strategic process if the value of a building is to be sustained. Building maintenance management is a complex and multi-faceted thought process that involves planning, directing, controlling and organizing maintenance services for the sustenance of the value of a building. It entails making intricate decisions under complex algorithms, uncertainty and risks within organizational resources. The purpose of this paper is to propose an alternative maintenance management model for university buildings in Malaysia. The proposed model reflects current thinking on building maintenance management. A number of studies have investigated the maintenance management of university buildings in Malaysia; however, all the studies have observed maintenance management procedures that are corrective and condition based. Nonetheless, this is contributing to the spate of maintenance backlogs and the lack of value delivery to the stakeholders. Although the research specifically focused on university buildings, many public and private sector organizations face similar maintenance management problems. Therefore this research has broader applications. The outcome of this research is to come up with a prototype maintenance management model that can facilitate university institutions to carry out buildings maintenance management services that meet the expectations and perceptions of the stakeholders.
This article presents the results of a questionnaire survey conducted on the background information of an ongoing research. The article describes the characteristics, size and strategies of university maintenance departments. Questionnaires were administered on 50 university maintenance organizations. With a 66 per cent response rate, the fi ndings suggest that though the expenditure on maintenance is inadequate, poor management of the resource and maintenance services are also contributing greatly to the poor service delivery, the spate of maintenance backlogs and poor user satisfaction. On the basis of the outcomes of the questionnaire survey and a literature review, a schematic value maintenance management model is proposed for university maintenance organization. The maintenance department should be regarded as a business unit. The signifi cant impact it has on the university institution can be illustrated by reviewing it in terms of characteristics. It should be strengthened by including it as one of the university strategic business units. This will also make it more attractive and competitive. The department should not be seen as an engineering-led unit, but as a business-led unit so that it can be creative, innovative and competitive.
Increased usage of air-conditioners in buildings leads to higher levels of electricity and energy consumption. Thermal insulation improves energyefficiency of buildings by retarding heat flow through building envelopes and thus reducing indoor cooling load. This research investigates the potential of two cement replacement materials, which are silica fume and Microwave Incinerated Rice Husk Ash (MIRHA), incorporated in cement paste as thermal insulation. Samples of cement paste with varying volumes of silica fume and MIRHA were prepared and evaluated on their thermal conductivity values. Their viability as building materials were then evaluated by measuring their permeable porosities and compressive strengths at three (3), seven (7) and 28 days of curing. Results show that higher dosage of silica fume and MIRHA in cement paste lead to lower thermal conductivity but negatively affect compressive strength and permeable porosity. MIRHA reduces thermal conductivity more efficiently than silica fume but leads to a faster decline in compressive strength and increase in permeable porosity. The lowest thermal conductivity value obtained in this experiment was 0.4273 Wm-1 K-1 , which was achieved by samples with MIRHA incorporated at 25% of cement paste volume.
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