Faculty of Business, Economics and Law

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https://hdl.handle.net/10292/10756
The Faculty of Business, Economics and Law is committed to conducting research that matters. Research that matters is both research of high academic quality and impact, and research of relevance and value for business, the professions, government and society. The Faculty of Business, Economics and Law, comprises The AUT Business School, The AUT Law School and The School of Economics as well as a research institute and five research centres.

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Browsing Faculty of Business, Economics and Law by Author "Abdul-Rahman, H"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Defects in affordable housing projects in Klang Valley, Malaysia
    (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2012-10-05) Abdul-Rahman, H; Wang, C; Wood, LC; Khoo, YM
    Several affordable housing programs have been introduced by the government to achieve the objectives of several Malaysia Plans; however, the success of the housing programs has been reduced due to readily reported quality problems and defects. This research aims to identify the types of defects in affordable housing and determine what is causing the defects, so that solutions may be devised to raise the quality of housing stock in Malaysia. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 310 residents of affordable housing, located in four different regions in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The most commonly occurring defects in affordable housing are leaking pipes, total failure of water supply systems, cracking in concrete walls, faulty door knobs, and dampness to concrete walls. This suggests that improvements in workmanship, the use of superior materials, and changes to more customer-oriented supervision and monitoring may reduce the incidence of defects. Local conditions, such as heavy rainfall, may influence dampness, and may reduce the generalizability of findings to other areas with different weather patterns. The findings have been reported to the Construction Industry Development Board of Malaysia to improve the quality of affordable housing.
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    Defects in affordable housing projects in Klang Valley, Malaysia
    (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2012-10-05) Abdul-Rahman, H; Wang, C; Wood, LC; Khoo, YM
    Several affordable housing programs have been introduced by the government to achieve the objectives of several Malaysia Plans; however, the success of the housing programs has been reduced due to readily reported quality problems and defects. This research aims to identify the types of defects in affordable housing and determine what is causing the defects, so that solutions may be devised to raise the quality of housing stock in Malaysia. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 310 residents of affordable housing, located in four different regions in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The most commonly occurring defects in affordable housing are leaking pipes, total failure of water supply systems, cracking in concrete walls, faulty door knobs, and dampness to concrete walls. This suggests that improvements in workmanship, the use of superior materials, and changes to more customer-oriented supervision and monitoring may reduce the incidence of defects. Local conditions, such as heavy rainfall, may influence dampness, and may reduce the generalizability of findings to other areas with different weather patterns. The findings have been reported to the Construction Industry Development Board of Malaysia to improve the quality of affordable housing.
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    Defects of tensioned membrane structures (TMS) in tropics
    (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2013-10-26) Wang, C; Abdul-Rahman, H; Wood, LC; Mohd-Rahim, FA; Zainon, N; Saputri, E
    The wide use of tensioned membrane structures (TMS) becomes prominent in many designs because of its aesthetic, ergonomic, and economical nature. Recently, TMS has been applied in the tropics with zone success,fully yet its defects specific to this region have received little attentionhave been hardly specified for this region. Through a questionnaire survey among of 890 uses and technicians of TMS in three different areas in Malaysia, this study identified the most frequently occurringed TMS defects in the tropics, such as "deterioratione of roof coatings", "corrodesion or fatigued in fixings", "fungal decay, mould growth, and dirty in membrane", "corrosion in anchor cables", and "degradation of fabrics". These defects are which were quite different from those in other climatic zones. The top five causes of TMS defects in the tropics are weather, aging, design, construction/installation, and material selection. However, Oonly "corrodesion or fatigued in fixings" is a significant predictor for "deterioration of roof coatings". Though it While this is not a causal effect, in practice in light of this, a practical implication is that TMS maintainers maintenance workers do not have to climb up to the roof to check the deterioration in coating but only need to predict that the deterioration through the corrossioncorrosionde levels in of the fixings instead. Further, seven countermeasures for TMS in tropic were are recommended. This study is the first comprehensive study examining tensioned membrane structure defects in the tropics zone.
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    Factor reduction and clustering for operational risk in software development
    (Incisive Financial Publishing Limited, 2014-09-30) Mohd-Rahim, FA; Wang, C; Boussabaine, H; Abdul-Rahman, H; Wood, LC; Cruz, M
    Software development failures frequently emerge as a result of the failure to understand and to identify risks. The aim of this paper is to identify the most salient risk factors during a software development project lifecycle, in terms of occurrence likelihood and impacts on cost overrun. A questionnaire survey was circulated to 2000 software development companies, IT consultancy and management companies, and web development companies in the UK, USA, Europe, India, China, Japan, Canada, Australia and Asian countries. This asked respondents to evaluate a number of risk factors. However, many factors were closely related and so we apply a factor reduction and clustering process to allow a smaller number of crucial risk factors to be identified. The three main clusters of risk factors identified in this study are ‘feasibility study’, ‘project team management’, and ‘technology requirements’. While ‘feasibility study’ may be unlikely to occur it can have significant impact on outcomes; ‘project team management’ is likely to occur but has relatively little impact on outcomes in comparison to ‘technology requirements’. Professionals will need to carefully check and balance these factors and generate a risk mitigation plan to reduce the severity of the project failures. These results allow them to connect the probability of occurrence and overall impact to focus their scarce resources on reducing the most pertinent risks in their project.
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    Green Hospital Design: Integrating Quality Function Deployment and End-user Demands
    (Elsevier, 2015-12-01) Wood, LC; Wang, C; Abdul-Rahman, H; Abdul-Nasir, NSJ
    There is a rapidly growing awareness amongst the public of facilities where the design that incorporate green construction. This paper aims to study the quality function deployment (QFD) concept and technique when implemented in the green construction industry with a particular focus on supporting green hospital design by identifying the factors (concerns) that affect the design. This research also develops QFD tools for green hospital designs known as house of quality green design (HOQGD). Data were collected through a questionnaire survey among public and private hospital end-users in Klang Valley, Malaysia. Findings revealed that end-users perceived “safety mechanism during emergency” as the utmost importance and satisfaction. The other demanded qualities were at an average degree of satisfaction; however, the degree of importance for some demanded qualities were “maximize natural light”, “natural ventilation”, “materials free from toxic”, “building orientation”, “healing environment”, “atmospheric condition”, “install water efficiency equipment”, “strategic landscape”, and “use of environment-friendly materials”. Accordingly, these were prioritized and incorporated in the developed HOQGD to inform green hospital design for both public and private facilities, especially in tropical regions. Keywords:
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    Integrating and ranking sustainability criteria for housing
    (ICE Publishing, London, UK, 2015-03-31) Abdul-Rahman, H; Wang, C; Wood, LC; Ebrahimi, M
    Numerous researchers have determined sustainability criteria relating to environmental performance but the other two sustainability components - economic and social performance - have not been taken into consideration in an integrated and hierarchy manner. Existing sustainability assessment methods (e.g., LEED, GBI, IGBC, and BREEAM) ignore the economic and social aspects, and sustainable criteria are not prioritized for decision making facilitation. To prioritize sustainable criteria for residential buildings in the triquetrous sustainability model including environmental, economic, and social in a global and integrated manner, a Fuzzy-AHP tool was employed and a structured expert-based development process comprised of seventeen building practitioners and eight academics from sixteen nations was conducted globally among carefully selected experts. A Fuzzy Weighted Hierarchy for Triquetrous Sustainability (FWH-TS) in residential buildings was developed at the end of this study. Assisted by programmers, the FWH-TS is expected to be developed into a PC software or Apps in the near future to improve construction management.
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    Negative impact induced by foreign workers: Evidence in Malaysian construction sector
    (Elsevier, 2012) Abdul-Rahman, H; Wang, C; Wood, LC; Low, SF
    Though foreign workers served to overcome the labor shortage in the Malaysian construction market, over-dependence on foreign workers and the negative impacts induced have become a serious social problem. The aims of this research are to identify those negative impacts induced by foreign workers in the Malaysian construction market and to determine strategies in minimizing these negative impacts. Data were collected through a structured interview and survey. The questionnaires were delegated to professionals in construction projects who have direct contacts with foreign workers. Only respondents from those companies registered under the CIDB grade G7 were chosen for this survey. There were 117 sets of questionnaires completed and analyzed through the structured interviews. The three principal factors attracting foreign workers to the Malaysian construction market are “Preference of the employers”, “Lifestyle and working conditions”, and “Unattractiveness of the career pathway”. The main negative impacts induced by foreign workers are “Over-dependence on foreign workers”, “Increment in criminal activities or social problems”, and “Existence of illegal workers”. This research proposes that strategies such as “Attract local workers into the construction industry”, “Industrialized Building Systems”, “Eliminate illegal migration”, and “Improve governance structure” would be successful in minimizing negative impacts induced by foreign workers.
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    Noise Annoyance and Loudness: Acoustic Performance of Residential Buildings in Tropics
    (Sage, 2015) Wang, C; Si, Y; Abdul-Rahman, H; Wood, LC; Whalley, W
    Acoustic properties of residential building are often neglected by designers, developers, contractors, and even home buyers. Noises from both the internal and external environments affect occupants' daily lives. This motivates the current study which aims to identify all types of audible noises in Malaysian residential buildings and to determine the physical and psychological impact of noise loudness and annoyance on occupants in various types of residential buildings. A questionnaire was conducted covering 19 types of noises in residential buildings with participants assessing the loudness and annoyance level. There were 171 valid forms collected from around Malaysia for analysis from one thousand posted forms, responding rate of 17.1%. Traffic noises were deemed as the most undesired type of noise, followed by the noises from neighbors and animals. More interestingly, the annoyance experienced in relation to noise from traffic and neighbors were inter-correlated. While many animal noises such as birds chirping, rooster calls, and insect noise cause little irritation to occupants, dogs barking are significantly more annoying to the occupants. Job stress and occupants' sensitivity to noise are highly correlated with many types of noises. Generally, the influences of humanrelated factors are more significant relative to the housing-related factors on the perceived noise loudness and annoyance.
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    The challenge of rural life nostalgia: barriers in redevelopment of Malay Reserve Land (MRL) in Klang Valley
    (SpringerOpen, 2015-02-10) Hanif, N-R; Azriyati, WN; Abdul-Rahman, H; Wang, C; Wood, LC
    The development of Malay reserve land is a nationwide issue which can be overcome through better understanding of the existing barriers. While many barriers have been examined, the challenges relating to land owner expectations and preferences has not been thoroughly examined. Using Kg Sungai Penchala in the capital city Kuala Lumpur as a case, this research used a structured interview survey of 258 respondents representing both owners and tenants. Statistical analysis demonstrates that majority of the land owners (individuals) rejected the idea to further develop the land. The land owners preferred to maintain the village status quo and they were satisfied with the current development level in the village. Only a minority of respondents agreed that the land should be developed and instead perceived that re-development of this Malay Reserve Land of Kg Sungai Penchala would be able to raise their quality of life. The restriction is much preferred by the land owners who preferred the current style of village living. Thus, immediate re-development of the area is not warranted and the preference of the land owners represents a strong barrier.
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