Incorporating risk mitigation into building performance rating tools (BPRTs) for Malaysia’s Higher Education Building / Natasha Khalil
Higher educational buildings (HEB) are believed to have a key function that affects not only the environment, but also human and economic resources. Inevitably, the growing student population with various learning activities in public university buildings has exacerbated space inefficiency, venti...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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2016
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| Online Access: | http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/6691/ http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/6691/1/perjanjian_NK.pdf http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/6691/2/natasha.pdf |
| Summary: | Higher educational buildings (HEB) are believed to have a key function that affects not
only the environment, but also human and economic resources. Inevitably, the growing
student population with various learning activities in public university buildings has
exacerbated space inefficiency, ventilation discomfort and inadequacy of facilities.
These malfunctions not only affect the buildings and sustainability, but in addition the
users are also likely to be directly impacted in terms of health and safety risk. In
accordance with the Government’s instruction on the holistic management of assets
through General Circular (No.1) dated 27th March 2009, all managements should
undertake a systematic approach to achieve building performance optimization.
However, a proactive tool to measure performance and users’ risk is still lacking in the
current assessment or maintenance of HEBs. Therefore, this research set out to develop
a building performance risk rating tool, as a performance assessment measure
concerning users’ health and safety risks in HEBs. The research has four objectives: i)
to identify the current concept of building performance assessment used for HEBs, ii) to
identify the indicators that contribute to the performance requirement and the users’
health and safety risk, iii) to determine the relative importance score as a
weightage/rating in the construct of performance-risk indicators, and iv) to develop a
building performance rating tool covering both building performance level and users’
risk level. This study adopted a mixed-mode approach that involves both quantitative
and qualitative methods. To achieve the first and the second research objectives, the
determinants of the indicators were initially compiled from the literature and the
previous building assessment tool. They were further confirmed through semistructured
interviews involving 18 building managers in Malaysia’s public HEBs. The
findings identified 26 indicators to be incorporated into the list of assessments. They
were categorised as functional, technical and indoor environmental performance
indicators. In the next stage, questionnaires and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)
method was used to achieve the third research objective. Twelve experts from the
leading facilities management organisation agreed to participate in the survey rating
process. The weightings of the indicators were extracted using the computer software,
Expert Choice 11. The AHP results ranked five indicators as the most important
indicators; structural stability (14.9%), fire prevention services (9.1%), building-related
illnesses (7.4%), emergency exits (6.8%) and electrical services (6.3%). The total
weightings from overall indicators also summed up the weights for technical
performance (49.9%), functional performance (36.7%), and indoor environmental
performance (13.4%). From this result, the proposed tool was developed based on the
previous rating tool, and it comprised three steps of assessment. The first and the second
steps evaluated each indicator, using the AHP weights and the performance assessment
score. The third step summarised the assessed building by signifying a rating
classification of “Excellent”, “Good”, “Medium”, “Low” or “Poor”, that suggests
further action to improve performance and mitigate users’ health and safety risk. The
proposed Building Performance-Risk Tool (BPRRT) has a significant contribution to
make as an improved proactive measure for performance assessment in HEBs. The
establishment of the BPRRT was successfully employed as an aid of improvement
towards the current performance assessment of HEB by emerging the concept of
building performance and risk into a numerical strategic approach. With this tool,
explanatory studies of building performance and users’ risk can be conducted with more
reliable data. |
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