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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the affordable housing shortage in the Greater Kuala Lumpur from the suppliers’ perspectives.

Primary data were collected through a cross-sectional survey questionnaire comprising 21 determinants and 111 experts in the housing industry.

The affordable housing shortages are consequences of regulations and policies on land allocations, building materials and the affordable housing market. The government should provide more lands to the developers or the government should directly build affordable housing on their lands. To lower the cost of construction, the government should reduce the importation tax and procedures, and the housing industry should find alternative building materials.

Theoretically, the research provided fresh insights into the causes of housing shortages and reasons for the increase in housing prices. The results will be useful to policymakers towards affordable housing delivery and to the developers and contractors on measures to increase profit margins and increase housing supply.

The conceptual stage of building design is where the most important decisions are made, for example, in determining the choice of structural elements such as floors. However, decisions made at this stage, particularly those involving costs and speeds, are often based on subjective judgement, rules of thumb and familiarity. This paper reports on the development of a computer spreadsheet tool that employs a more objective and systematic procedure in selecting concrete floors at the conceptual design stage, in which costs and speeds are quantitatively evaluated using, respectively, the method of elemental estimating and a simple bar chart technique, but in conjunction with a specially developed “lead‐in index”method. The results of the evaluation are then tabulated and systematically ranked to facilitate selection of the best floor system. The tool would thus assist engineers to make a more well‐informed and rapid choice of floor systems at the early design stage.

There have been complaints and criticisms of the conditions and performance of university buildings in Malaysia. The purpose of this paper is to report research looking into building maintenance practices in Malaysia.

To achieve its objectives, the research combined a literature review and a case study. The case study aimed to provide a details and factual information on the maintenance procedures of a university.

It was found that the maintenance procedures on the case studied were corrective and budget driven. It was also found that the university favours out‐sourcing to in‐sourcing their maintenance service.

The findings of this study are based on a case, therefore the findings may not represent the maintenance practices of other public universities in Malaysia or elsewhere.

Some universities may adopt some of the good maintenance practices of the university studied. Some of the observations could be helpful to other universities striving to achieve best maintenance practices.

The paper is able to expose the weakness in university maintenance practices in Malaysia and outlines some positive attributes.

The state of public buildings in Tanzania exhibits evidence of a lack of maintenance and repair. Despite efforts to raise the performance of public buildings, little emphasis is placed on maintenance works and related factors affecting maintenance costs of public buildings, which are often high. This study aims to examine factors affecting maintenance costs of public buildings.

This was a case study involving two government building agencies – Tanzania Buildings Agency (TBA) and National Housing Corporation (NHC). A total of 387 tenants and 29 experts participated in the study. Data were collected using questionnaires and analyzed using Stata version 16 – descriptive statistics feature reporting absolute numbers and frequencies.

Both tenants and experts ranked building age, poor quality control, building material used, execution of work when it is urgent and inadequate financial resources as major factors affecting maintenance costs of public buildings. In the distinctive rating, tenants ranked resource management as a major factor, while experts ranked ignorance about the property of materials, misuse of buildings and faulty maintenance as major factors.

The study has some limitations such as geographical coverage which is limited to Dar es Salaam and Dodoma regions, hence missing information from other regions may have different experiences. Additionally, data were collected in a self-reported manner which could bring about information bias.

Findings of this study provide an insight on recent developments on the factors affecting maintenance cost of buildings using two cases of NHC and TBA which are single entities owning a substantial amount of housing units in Tanzania. Factors affecting the maintenance cost of public buildings identified in this study is a threshold for experts to devise strategies for minimizing maintenance costs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that assessed factors affecting maintenance cost in public buildings run by TBA and NHC from the tenant and expert perspectives.

Built heritage constitutes the uniqueness and identity of a place. While being overlooked in existing research, built heritage in small towns is increasingly threatened by dilapidation, exhaustion and disappearance. Therefore, this study aims to examine the challenges in protecting the unique features and identity of small towns with regard to building regulations, guidelines and policies.

A semi-structured interview was conducted amongst a purposive sample of nine stakeholders from different organizations involved in heritage matters in Malaysia to investigate the issues and challenges facing the protection of small towns’ identity with regard to existing protection mechanisms impacting development of the towns. The data were then analyzed using the qualitative software package NVivo 8.0. The summary models imported from NVivo were created to visualize the connections between various dimensions of constructs, concepts and categories identified in the interviews.

The study found that the current issues of built heritage protection at the local level can be classified into five emergent themes: legislative, institutional, economic, social and technical issues. While absence of specific guideline for identifying local cultural places has been identified as the most fundamental issues facing the protection of unique and distinct resources in small Malaysia towns, the paper concludes with a framework of measures that can then be used for identification and protection of small town identity.

This study is the first of many fruitful contributions that examine heritage identification and protection mechanisms at the local level.

Retrofitting and rehabilitation are part of the conservation approach in Heritage Building Conservation Guideline 2016 in Malaysia. Heritage buildings can be retrofitted to preserve their culture and history while being given a new lease. Rehabilitation is a preservation requirement that is more flexible since it assumes that the structure has already deteriorated to the point where repairs are required to prevent further deterioration. Although the strategies of these two approaches are different, their combination resulted in sustainable heritage building maintenance. This long-term maintenance strategy is necessary, especially for Malaysia's numerous heritage schools, which have serious maintenance problems as a result of infrequent maintenance, repairs, and funding shortages.

This study involved secondary data from an intensive literature review along with a comparative study from articles review and context analysis. A comparative study was conducted to determine the typical issue with heritage school buildings and the best maintenance practice for these structures. Finally, it involved a SWOT analysis study of retrofitting and rehabilitating heritage school buildings will be discussed in this study as well.

The findings of this study will focus on developing a strategic planning framework and maintenance for heritage school buildings in Malaysia to achieve sustainable maintenance. It will also highlight sustainable maintenance best practices for heritage school buildings in Malaysia. Finally, SWOT analysis will go over the pros and cons of retrofitting and rehabilitation for these buildings.

This paper put forward the requirements of strategic planning in heritage school buildings and outlines the significance of sustainable maintenance for educational buildings. It is an alternative for cost savings that has not been extensively investigated in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a prioritisation framework that can guide the provision and management of on-campus student housing facility (SHF) services of southern Ghana Universities.

The paper adopted a phenomenological research strategy. Data was collected by means of focus group discussions (FGDs); a total of ten FGDs were conducted. Observations were also done during the site visit to augment the FGDs. The data were analysed thematically.

The study found that some services are perceived as “extremely important” and “basic” while others are seen as “unimportant” and “indifferent”. Services including; electricity, water, security, internet, cleaning service, maintenance service, generator, ventilation (fan), health service, library service, electric socket, study furniture, refuse collection, pest control and fire extinguisher were perceived by students as “extremely important”. However, not all of these services were perceived as “basic” requirements.

The framework can be used as a guide by facility and hostel managers to effectively prioritise and manage the services required in a university SHF. Moreover, when designing, constructing and adapting student housing facilities, the framework can be used as a guide to ensure that all critical services are provided in the student housing facilities.

Although several studies have been conducted on student housing, studies that specifically focuses on the services required in a SHF and the prioritisation of such services is lacking. This study combines students’ requirements, importance levels of requirements, and classification of requirements to develop a prioritisation system for student housing services.