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Construction waste especially material waste is one major concern for the construction projects and has important implications in terms of socioeconomic and environmental aspects for the country. Construction industry being largest consumer of raw materials derived from natural resources also produces high amount of material waste that negatively impacts the environment. The building industry alone in Malaysia has reportedly generated approximately 25,600 tonnes of construction and demolition wastes daily due to rapid development. Therefore, any means of reducing material waste will not only result in significant cost savings within the projects but also reducing the pressure on the landfills and ease environmental concerns dealing with such waste conversion and recycling; and reduction. This study examines the causes and prevention of material waste in the construction specifically the building industry through the principles of waste management available. Questionnaires survey is the main tool deployed for data collection. The average and relative index were used to analyse the various aspects of the data collected. Stages of works used for the study include the material handling and storage stage; procurement of material stage; usage and operation of the material stage; and the design and documentation stage. The results indicate that respondents are aware of the concept of waste management but lack of awareness on the availability of such guidelines. It is hopeful that this study can improve on waste management implementation in order to uptake the principle of reduce, recycle and reuse material waste so as to reduce construction costs, provide good savings to the end users and improve the level of productivity of the nation.

Most rural locations in East Malaysia are not electricity grid connected. These places rely heavily on high-cost diesel fuels for generating electric power, which can be environmentally unfriendly. Most of all, this situation hampered the potential growth in terms of economic productivity and developments in these rural locations. However, with the vast network of streams and rivers available in Sarawak, there are high prospective of constructing micro-hydro power plant as electricity generating alternative. Efforts and studies on micro hydro power plants have been put in place. However, there exists a gap in the field of study of optimized design and construction of micro-hydropower system. This project proposed a Value Engineering (VE) study in the civil and structure sections of micro-hydro plant in Kampung Assum, Sarawak in order to achieve high functional value for the facility. Based on the literature review several VE methodologies are adopted and modified in order to achieve the objectives of this study. VE Job Plan was utilized as the backbone of this research study framework. VE calculation modelling is produced and conventional micro-hydro power plant is designed using the modelling as control baseline design. Ideas to further optimise and improve the value of the micro-hydro system are generated and evaluated, which are then compared with the control baseline design. Several cycles using the proposed VE methodology are repeated to determine the most prominent idea, which can uplift the functional value of the micro-hydro system significantly. Determination of value for micro-hydropower system is dependent on the cost incurred and the efficiency of the civil and structural components as a whole. The chosen idea is then used to the next development phase which notable changes in parameters of micro-hydro civil structures are further determined to improve the value. In this study, evaluating the micro-hydro civil components as a whole with adjustments made to modify the overall output data are discovered to be the prominent idea. From this study, the optimisation proposed could improved the functional value of the micro-hydro power plant in Kampung Assum by a significant 17%.

Construction projects nowadays have higher complexities, calling for increased awareness, assessment and management of the risks involved. Key construction risks need to be first identified, then assessed and methods on risk mitigation need to be mapped out to better managed the potential of undesirable events within projects. This study aims to compile Malaysian construction related risks and their relevant impacts on the construction project risk and its effects to the construction projects. It serves as a compilation database for Malaysian construction project, which will be used as future risk data. Data was collected by conducting structured questionnaire surveys and distributing it to professionals involved in the construction industry. Discussion herewith will emphasize on the findings related to project risks detected based on the sources of risk. The risks will be group under specific groups of risk and linked with the effects the said risks produced. This project correlates the sources and effects of construction risks in Malaysia. It is hopeful that through this research, a proper knowledge or risk retention centre can ultimately be created to aid future effective qualitative and quantitative risk analysis for all construction projects.

Lack of coordination and fragmentations have always existed among the stakeholders and parties involved in the implementation of planning, design and construction process of construction projects, especially in the aspects of information transfer. In the recent trends, Building Information Modelling, BIM has been introduced to address the fragmentation issues. The BIM framework is based on the notion of coordination between stakeholders in digital format for information exchange throughout the construction progress. Although BIM technology has been implemented in Malaysia for several years, low adoption is found within the Sarawak construction industry. This paper aims to assess the awareness and readiness for BIM implementation in the Sarawak construction industry. The study was carried out using questionnaire survey across the districts in the Southern Region, Central Region and Northern Region of Sarawak. There are in total 404 responses received, and it is revealed that only 14% of the participants have experience in BIM-related projects. This is still far from the goals set by the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Malaysia. Meanwhile, 63% of respondents had heard of BIM and 46% of them had attended some seminar or program related on BIM. The investigation of awareness, readiness and challenges of BIM implementation has been further inferred and compiled as a foundation guideline for the proposed solution framework to increase BIM usage in the state. It is hopeful that proposed solution framework can help in overcoming BIM implementation barriers in the Sarawak Construction Industry.

Construction duration is defined as the time frame given by the Client of a project use to complete the project under normal working conditions, practice of construction. However, often times, projects faced time overruns and hence, needing to activate contractual remedies like Extension of Time (EoT). This paper aims to investigate the factors related to award the Extension of Time (EoT) for construction projects in especially in the public sector in Sarawak. A structured checklist was created as an instrument and employed to accomplish the objective of this research. A total of 111 previous public projects which were granted EoT were studied. The findings revealed several detailed factors that had typically led to project delays in the State. These findings are expected to offer the construction industry stakeholders in Sarawak a focal point on those delay that could be included in construction project duration estimates and management of construction performances, followed by the appropriate corrective and improvement measures for time management for construction projects.

This study presents the development of a micro-scaled 3-stage wastewater treatment system applicable to small volume domestic effluents. The primary components of the system include 1) Spiral-Framed Human Hair-Based Filter, 2) Plastic Medium Mixed Flow Biotower, and 3) Pistia Stratiotes-Based Free Surface Water Wetland System. The first stage Spiral-Framed Human Hair-Based Filter consists of an oil and grease removal apparatus filled with human hair blocks and operated in a spiral plane aimed at removing emulsified oils from wastewater. The process is followed by a second stage Plastic Medium Mixed Flow Biotower filled with perforated cylindrical plastic tubes in horizontal and vertical arrangements to provide alternate vertical and cross flows for removal of suspended solids, ammoniacal-nitrogen, and biochemical oxygen demand. The effluent would then be channelled to the free surface water wetland system (third stage) filled with Pistia Stratiotes (water lettuce) for removal of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium from wastewater. From this study, it was found that Human Hair-Based Filter could remove 73.54% emulsified oils from wastewater, while the combined removal efficiencies of Plastic Medium Mixed Flow Biotower and Free Surface Water wetland system operated in series recorded 59.2% biochemical oxygen demand, 87.9% ammoniacal-nitrogen, 90.6% nitrogen, 54.9% phosphorous, 68.5% potassium, and 59.0% turbidity.

A 3-stage micro-scale wastewater treatment system that consisted of 1) a spiral-framed human hair-based filter, 2) a plastic medium mixed flow biotower, and 3) a free surface water wetland system filled with Pistia Stratiotes (water lettuce) operating in series was recently developed and performance tests were conducted. Performance tests were carried out to determine the efficiencies of the system for removal of physically emulsified and free oils, organic matters such as biochemical oxygen demand, ammoniacal-nitrogen, suspended solids,and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium from semi-synthetic wastewaters. From this study, it was found that the human hair-based filter could retain approximately 73.5% of physically emulsified oils, while the mixed flow biotower was capable of reducing approximately 35.0% biochemical oxygen demand, 57.4% ammoniacal-nitrogen, 51.8% nitrogen, 13.4% phosphorus, 21.8% potassium, and 21.9% reduction in turbidity. The Pistia Stratiotes-based free surface water wetland was found to remove approximately 24.1% biochemical oxygen demand, 30.6% ammoniacal-nitrogen, 38.0% nitrogen, 41.5% phosphorus, 46.7% potassium and 31.7% reduction in turbidity. When the mixed flow biotower and free surface water wetland system were to operate in series, the combined removal efficiencies were approximately 59.2% for biochemical oxygen demand, 87.9% for ammoniacal-nitrogen, 90.6% for nitrogen, 54.9% for phosphorus, 68.5% for potassium, and 59.0% reduction in turbidity. Experimental data also showed that daily uptake rates (mg/kg-day) of organics and nutrients by per kilogram of Pistia Stratiotes were approximately 1,731 mg for biochemical oxygen demand, 1,015 mg for ammoniacal-nitrogen, 1,206 mg for nitrogen, 1,468 mg for phosphorus, and 5,431 mg for potassium.