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Construction workers are always exposed to numerous occupational hazards of different kinds and levels of complexity in every project they engage in. Therefore, there is a need for training modules which can provide the knowledge to construction workers to acquire the skills necessary for occupational and environmental safety on site. However, current safety training still lacks hands-on approaches and it is theory-oriented. This is due to the nature of the construction environment itself in which hands-on approaches are impossible to be applied for certain types of hazards. Training which is assisted by technology is an effective tool in improving learning for not just for children but also for adults. Currently, serious game has become a new approach in training and learning not limited to the field of education but this approach has been applied across disciplines and areas including military, mining, transportation, oil and gas and also the construction industry. Therefore, this paper sought to review construction workers’ perceptions toward serious game as a training tool. Fifty players at various levels from the construction industry participated in a pilot study. A set of questionnaire was distributed to the participants during an occupational safety and hazard (OSH) training course with the cooperation of OSH state agency in the southern region of Peninsular Malaysia and also online. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data from the questionnaire. Preliminary findings of the pilot study indicated that construction workers had high expectation toward serious game in delivering hands-on training in safer environment. They also believed training module using serious game had the potential in creating affordable, interactive and entertaining training module for the industry. The study contributes to an understanding of occupational safety training needs in the construction industry for a safer, more affordable and interactive as well as entertaining approach.

Variation does not only affect labour productivity but also leads to the dispute, time and cost overrun. Consequently, it affects projects performance. It is, therefore, imperative for construction professionals to eliminate unnecessary additional cost from a project so as to optimize the client’s benefit against input resources. This paper identifies and examines the most significant causes that contribute to the variation orders. Also, Nigerian construction industry is used as a case study. Variation orders causing factors were assessed. Questionnaires were administered to clients, consultants and contractors to elicit information regarding variation causing factors. These factors were analyzed using frequency aggregation, mean score method and subsequently ranked according to their severity. The result revealed three most significant causes of variation which are: ‘Change of plan’’ with the highest frequency of 58% then followed by ‘‘Conflicting contract documents (50%). The next most frequent causing factors were the “substitution of materials” and “change in design” each with frequency of 43%. The least causing factor of variation was the “error and omission in design” with the frequency of 10%. Also differing site condition, new government regulation, weather condition were identified as other cause of variation with the frequency of 27%, 29% and 10% respectively. It has also shown that most critical source of variation order is the client due to change of plan then followed by consultant due to conflicting contract document.

Determining optimum locations for an industry is a critical and complex decision for manufacturers. To select a potential site to establish food industries, various criteria should be considered regarding accessibility, delivery, market, and environmental factors. In this study, the weighted overlay method was employed to develop an up-to-date geodatabase providing the potential areas for establishing food industries to assist urban development in Qaemshahr city, Iran. The required data were acquired through various sources including remote sensing, Global Positioning System (GPS), and Geographical Information System (GIS). To achieve the aim, firstly the criteria of food industries settlement in Qaemshahr city have been measures, and the corresponding maps have been prepared. Using weighted overlay method all weighted maps were aggregated and final suitability map was established. Finally, the suitable sites for food industries in Qaemshahr were determined. The results have been validated by experts practicing Qaemshahr urban development. The results showed that around 172 sites are suitable for establishing the food industries in Qaemshahr. Accuracy assessment analysis proved the effectiveness of the achieved results with the accuracy level of 90%. The study concluded that the geodatabase model prepared in this study could be useful for future food industry development plans in Qaemshahr city, Iran.

The increasing reliance on knowledge in industry and services is generating strong incentives to develop more efficient ways to transfer the discoveries made in academia to business. This paper mainly focuses to identify the status and characteristics of university-industry (UI) collaborations at a research university. Moreover a quantitative research method was adopted in this study. The sample was selected from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). A total of 42 UTM centers participated in this survey. The findings demonstrate the type of existing UI collaborations and mobility at UTM. Furthermore, the result indicated the characteristics of university partners.

Estimation of cost for building and civil engineering projects with minimum error at the conceptual stage of project development is crucial for planning. This paper evaluated the most significant cost escalation causing factors in building and civil engineering projects. Questionnaires were administered to clients, consultants and contractors to elicit information regarding their opinions with regard to these factors. Mean score value for each factor was determined. Also level of agreement of ranking of such factors between groups was investigated. The results of the analysis show that the most significant causes were the “Fluctuation of price of material” and “Variations” with the highest mean score values of 3.9 and 3.73 respectively. Also there was agreement in the opinions between all the groups with regard to these factors. A linear multiple regression models for the prediction of final cost of construction of building and civil engineering projects were developed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS).

One of the most important issues in various energy issues is to decrease fossil fuel energy usage and promote renewable energies in developing countries. Iran as a developing country began exploiting renewable resources from the early 1990s. This paper investigates the financial viability of renewable energy technologies in Kerman, which is located in the hot and dry parts of Iran and has a high potential of solar and wind energy. First the potential for solar and wind energy sources are studied and afterwards through two quantitative methods, the cost of this implementation is compared to the benefits gained. The results prove that without a massive financial support by the government, renewable energies would not be economically feasible to be implemented into private households.

The aim of this study was to improve the commercialization level in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). For achieving this goal various factors and issues were examined to identify how they affect the procedure of university commercialization. These factors include the role of technology transfer office /center, availability of finance, availability of potential licensee and entrepreneurial orientation (EO) among the university researchers. Among these four factors, this study focused more on EO among academic researchers and its effect on the commercialization rate. This study was based on a qualitative research method and was designed to use a case study approach. For investigating the factors and issues in this study, a total of ten face-to-face interviews were conducted. The respondents were chosen from inventors, researchers, academic entrepreneurs, and Technology Transfer Office staff in UTM. The researcher utilized the content-analysis approach to analyze the data obtained from the semi-structured interviews of the respondents. The results indicated that EO among the university researchers, the role of technology transfer office /center, the availability of potential licensee and availability of finance were significant to the research output commercialization at university. Overall, the most critical factor was availability of finance.

Building energy modeling is essential to estimate energy consumption of buildings. Predicting building energy consumption benefits the owners, designers, and facility managers by enabling them to have an overview of building energy consumption and can help them to determine building energy performance during the design phase. This paper focuses on two different shapes of commercial building, H and rectangle to estimate energy consumption in buildings in three different climate zones, cold, hot-humid, and mixed-humid. To address this, DOE-2 building simulation software was used to build and simulate individual commercial building configurations that were generated using Monte Carlo simulation techniques. Ten thousand simulations for each building shape and climate zone were conducted to develop a comprehensive dataset covering the full range of design parameters.

Enhancing the quality of urban life is considered by social scientists. It has instigated a growing attention in findings from surveys aiming to measure the inhabitant image in particular places. This paper investigates preference and satisfaction that utilizes a model from both a conceptual and empirical perspective. It mainly explores the image of certain social-spatial factors enhanced in the degree of preference and satisfaction with neighborhood and housing types on both scales, as an overall and as details of urban elements and house features. It first presents a brief overview of literature and the methodology and then reviews findings covering 162 respondents living in two cities that represent four different neighborhood patterns, social-spatial characters, and housing types. The four neighborhoods are: traditional settlements, attached houses, tower apartments and single family houses. The major findings reveal that satisfaction within a given neighborhood does not necessarily associate with place attachment and similarly, despite realization of lacking certain social-spatial qualities in the neighborhood, people may feel attached to the place because of certain attributes. However, there is on one hand a positive relationship between satisfaction and feelings of a neighborhood as home, and on the other hand, differences in preference and satisfaction of house types, urban elements and house features.

Sustainable office building indoor environment design is a challengeable issue for professionals in thermal comfort, satisfaction, health, and energy fields of research. The professionals intensively need a comprehensive list of office indoor environment design features to promote the level of performance and productivity of staff. One of the most effective factors dealing with staff performance and productivity is physical and psychological health which has not yet been investigated in depth is open-plan office design. In this regard, the current research aimed at establishing a comprehensive list of Open Plan Offices Design (OPOD) features affecting physical and psychological health and well-being of the staff at office buildings. Research methodology engaged two phases corresponding to two objectives. Phase one was to investigate OPOD features and sub-features through a critical literature review using fishbone cause-and-effect analysis technique. Phase one has clustered the OPOD features into two; positive and negative classes. The cause-and-effect analysis determined 3 positive features and 5 negative features involved in the positive and negative classes, respectively. The Efficient Workflow and Performance, Flexible Design, and Cost Efficient were identified as positive OPOD features which involves a number of sub-features. The Distraction, Decreasing Work Feedback, Job Dissatisfaction, Illness, and stress have been determined as OPOD features which impact negatively on staff’s health. The second phase conducted a content analysis on reviewed literatures to indicate the popularity of citation of each OPOD feature in previous studies. The content analysis determined in the Positive cluster, the sub-feature “Facilitate Communication”, under Efficient Workflow & Performance was investigated more than other sub-features. In addition, in the Negative cluster, the sub-feature Auditory Distraction under Distraction was highly investigated. The research asserts that undertaking the research outputs will promote performance and productivity of staff in office buildings. Architects, facility managers, design consultants, and authority may use the output as a decision support checklist for future office design and/or renovations.

Sustainable Building Assessment Tools have not yet measured the association between user satisfaction with adaptive behavior and energy efficiency. The current research aims to rectify this problem by testing the hypothesis that user satisfaction with adaptive behavior affects building energy consumption. To test the hypothesis, the staff’s overall satisfaction with adaptive behavior in response to tenant energy-efficiency features was used as the independent variable, while office unit energy consumption was used as the dependent variable. A set of conceptual variables and measured variables were identified for both the dependent and independent variables. A total of nine possible combinations of measured variables were investigated through a survey fielded in ten office units. The survey analysis determined that the building users are not satisfied with the tenant energy efficiency features and that they may adapt the indoor environment cooling and lighting qualities. An expert input study was conducted to validate the results with respect to the hypothesis. Seven experts who had experience in building assessments were invited to participate in the input study. Grounded group decision making analysis method confirmed the hypothesis testing results. The research results indicated that user adaptive behaviors directly affect building energy performance. Sustainable Building Assessment Tool developers along with energy efficient building design consultants and contractors could make use of these research findings.

The landscape architecture covers aesthetic aspects, as well as, individual’s activities, and their sense of attachment to urban elements. The river as a natural landscape can play a significant role in urban rehabilitation and residents’ well-being and welfare. The rapid urban development and urban regeneration has inadvertently resulted in a limited attachment to urban ecosystem and landscape designs that make to loos urban river identity and river place meaning. In addition, the riverscape design was not sufficiently studied in historical city rehabilitation. In addition, urban riverscape design focuses on physical aspects while understanding the meaning, social value, social bonding, and psychological sense to riverscape as a place in historical city development still remains a challenging proposition to be undertaken. Hence, this study is motivated to address the need to investigate the association between riverscape and place attachment in historical citied. The study conducted a comprehensive literature review on place attachment dimensions identified by previous research. The study determined twenty three dimensions within three clusters, physical/environmental, personal, and psychological. The dimensions are, pro-environmental behavior, connectedness to the nature, emotional association, person dimension, psychological dimension, place meaning, place identity, recreation experience, destination loyalty, leisure involvement, willingness, sense of place, place satisfaction, length of residence, scale of place, emotional connection, moral factors, place continuous, social bonding, social well-being, and civic and natural dimensions. In conclusion, these dimensions need to be considered in riverscape design and development in heritage cities, such as Malacca in Malaysia, to enhance quality of life and livability, simultaneously. As a future study, formulating the association between riverscape design and place attachment is proposed.

Preliminary research shows the shortcoming of Building Performance field of research to measure outdoor performance of building mainly EETP factors. Accordingly, this research aimed at proposing a future building performance towards Energy Efficient Travel Plan (EETP) based on user friendly EETP factors. The research methodology engaged three research phases. Phase 1 was to identify user friendly EETP factors. In this phase after a literature review, fix-format self reporting interview survey was conducted among experts in Travel Plan implementation in Malaysia. ‘Phase II’ was to investigate effective Building performance factors on user friendly EETP, within the literature review conducted on building performances followed by brainstorming with 5 experts in building management field of research. Final phase was to validate the proposed building performance towards EETP in a futuristic cross-impact scenario study. In summary, this research introduced three main outcomes, first: a list of user friendly EETP factors, second: EETP building performance factors and Third: future building performance factors towards EETP based on futuristic cross-impact analysis. In conclusion, this study introduced lists of new innovative future building performances including; BCS (Building Communication System), BEEM (Building Energy Education Management), EETP (Energy Efficient Travel Plan), BRc.S (Building Recycling System), and BAgr. (Building Agriculture) investigated as future building performance factors.