Facilities Management

Before I took this elective subject, I was seldom thought about what is going to happen after a new building has been completed. From here I learnt that the building will be maintained and administrated by a Facilities Manager after the constructions of the building are completed. 

Other than that, the building's design performance and its building services are fairly important to a facilities managers. He has to know or foresee what problems and issues will be arise if the building services system are designed in this way. For example, it is not suitable to install gypsum board ceiling externally in a rise building, it is because it is very impractically and it will cost a lot to set up temporary scaffolding for carrying out the maintenance. 

From this subject's group assignment, we get to know that there are different types of building available in our surrounding area. Not only we learn the type of building which chose as case study, we also study what are their management system whether it is Management Community, Joint Management Board, or the Developer himself.

We also gets to see and study an actual swimming pool system in Suriamas Condominium, the technicians explained to us how is such system being operated and maintained. The equipments of the swimming pool system basically are sand filters, balancing tanks, water pumps, chemical tanks and its piping to designated area to equipments.

 Sand Filters

The swimming pool area.

The swimming pool and spa pump sets.

Conclusion, this elective subject has inspired me to look into building from different perspectives. Like how are the occupants of the building will be affected, or how the administration team going to solve the problems and etc.

Financial Management

This subject has taught all the formulas and how to analyse a company's status. The formulas in this subject are very useful in my future career, it will help me to see clearer picture of current situation. 

For example, the net present value is very useful too, it helped us to see how much this project will generate the profits and take in the time value of money into consideration. The time value of money concept is very interesting concept, it basically saying that the value of the money now may not worth the same in the future due to inflation or deflation.

The formula for Present Value

Where i = required rate of return, n = number of years


Then, we apply this formula

Net Preset Value = Present Value of Future Income - Initial Investment Cost 

If NPV > 0, then we should consider to accept this project. On the other hand, if NPV < 0, then we should not accept this project and start to look for other projects which are profitable.

The group assignment of this project is interesting and challenging, we were asked to choose a listed company in BURSA Malaysia. After we had chose Hap Seng Consolidated Berhad as our case study, we analysed their financial status, objectives, market target and share, forecast their following three years' financial status, and the problems which they might faced in the future.

From here, I learned that these process is very similar to evaluate tenderer's background and their financial status. It is very important process which we Quantity Surveyors would like to recommend the best performance tenderer instead of a poor one to our Client, this is to avoid causing our Client loss their profit due to a poor performance tenderer.

Building Economic

The only assignment of this subjects is basically to update a cost plan and compare such cost plan to lowest tender received. After we have updated the cost plan, we were asked to spot out any potential bills, which later to be reduced to lower estimated cost without changing any designs and specifications.

We used to similar past year projects' ECA (Elemental Cost Analysis) to compare with our current updated cost plan. We found out that our Provisional Sums and Contingency Sums in our cost plan is 2 times higher compared to similar past year projects. So, we made the adjustment for both provisional sums and contingency sums and managed to bring down overall estimated cost up to 7.56%.

The following part of assignment is not an easy task, our group has a lost our direction at first after we just completed update and adjust our cost plan. We are not sure how to compare the new updated cost plan with the lowest tender which we received after the tender been issued out.

Then, we working at our best to find the solution for this matter like discussing with others group, asking our lecturer and etc. Finally, based on limited given information, we choose to work "backward" for comparing our own cost plan with the lowest tender.

From the comparison process, we learned several scenarios could be happen if the gaps between our own cost plan with lowest tender. Such scenarios can be like the price of reinforcement steel has increased once we have issued out the tender to tenderer, thus the tenderers have submitted with higher building structural cost and others work items cost which affected by such increment price of the reinforcement steel.

Conclusion, these assignment works assisted us to set up strong basic ground for us to have more understanding these process, like which to be added into consideration and which to be excluded. 

Professional Practice 2

I learned that the topics in this subject are challenging and interesting too. For example, the topic like Construction Disputes, Contractual Claims, Setting-Off by Employer, Determination by Employer and etc. These topics assisted me to have a better understand of nowadays Quantity Surveyor's industry practices. Which this can enable me to perform and compete better when I join the industry.

The assignments of this subject have been divided into two parts. The first assignment is a seminar, we have to prepare a presentation of a specific topic in front of our course mates and lecturer. In the seminar, I have improved myself to speak openly in the public. The purpose of this seminar is assist us to learn how to speak confidently and comfortably in the public or in front of group of people. We Quantity Surveyors will have to give presentation from time to time, explaining current cash flow of the project status, proposing alternative construction material for design team to consider and etc. So, I personally thinks this seminar assignment does helped me in those areas.

The second assignment of this subject is more on preparing a Final Accounts and Statement of Account. In this assignment we learned what items should take into consideration to prepare a final accounts. For example, we should exclude the provisional sum when doing final accounts if we did not used that sums and if we have used the provisional sum, then we should only add the actual spent and not the full amount of previously allowed amount. After the adjustment of the contract sum, then we can find out the actual amount to be due to contractor or employer and prepare a State of Accounts.

Measurement 5

In this subject, I learned that there is another standard method of measurement which we Quantity Surveying can refer to it for our measurements and preparing Bill of Quantities. This standard of method of measurement which I mentioned earlier is Malaysian Civil Engineering Standard Method of Measurement, MyCESMM. It is published by CIDB (Construction Industry Development Board Malaysia),it is very similar to SMM2 (Standard of Method Measurement 2) which published by RISM (Royal Institute of Surveyor Malaysia).

The topic of Measurement 5 group assignment is a Class F: Earthwork which is under MyCESMM. Such work item is about the measurement of earthwork volume which such volume later to be cut or fill. In the lecture, I learned two formulas to assist me to calculate the volume of the earthwork.

Firstly, this formula is Simpson's Rule for Area and it is used to calculate each section's areas.

Area = D/3 * (K + 2L + 4M)

D = distance between offsets

K = sum of 1st. and last offset

L = sum of remaining odd offsets

M = sum of even offsets

Secondly, this formula is Simpson's Rule for Volume and it is used to calculate the volume based on all calculated section’s area previously.

Volume = D/3 * (A1 + 4A2 + 2A3 + 4A4 …… + 2A(n-2) + 4A(n-1) + An)

n is an odd number

A = section areas calculated from the first formula

There is one requirement before we can these two formulas; such requirement is that we must have odd numbers of offset. This is due to not defeating the Simpson’s rule which required odd numbers of offset. Thus, I learned I have to be careful, in order to avoid making any silly mistakes. It is because that if I made any small mistake in the either first or second formula, it will lead to wrong result.

This assignments required five student per group, and its work load been divided equally into these five student. There are four sets of calculation will be calculated by four different person, so there is chances of inconsistency works will be produced. We had a small meeting with all member of the group, in order to have more consistent ways to complete this assignment. From here, I learned that the teamwork and communication in the groups are playing vital role in this assignment.