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Various studies have been conducted to explore the factors that are important to be considered for the effectiveness of construction contract administration (CCA) but lack in the context of graduate architects. The purpose of this study is to identify factors influencing the effectiveness of graduate architects in CCA and possible methods to enhance their work efficiency through developing the relevant skills in a changing construction environment.

This paper identified the factors that influence the effectiveness of graduate architects in CCA through the quantitative methods. General skill elements that are perceived as essential for the effectiveness of CCA had been investigated through a survey of graduate architects in the construction industry. One hundred and twenty-seven completed questionnaires returned were analyzed and tested using descriptive analysis and relative important index (RII).

The result from the study showed that the factors influencing the effectiveness of graduate architects as CCA are building construction skills, design management skills, project management skills, soft skills and dispute resolution skills.

The contribution of this study can be utilized for developing models/tools in the future that would improve the work performance of graduate architects in CCA. Educators may utilize this study to improve their syllabus to cater to the market's demand and facilitate students' entry into the labor market.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the impacts of good maintenance work for heritage buildings in Malaysia. This purpose is achieved through identifying factors that lead to the lack of maintenance of heritage buildings, establishing strategies to overcome the lack of maintenance of heritage buildings and analyzing the impact of good maintenance work on heritage buildings in Malaysia.

A quantitative method was employed for this study to identify the variables that most influence the maintenance of heritage buildings in Malaysia. The respondents were the owners of the heritage buildings in Peninsular Malaysia. There were 65 owners of heritage buildings identified from the official website of the Department of National Heritage, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Malaysia. Simple random sampling was used to obtain the sample size of the targeted respondent. A total of 56 questionnaire surveys were distributed to the owners of heritage buildings. In total, 37 respondents returned the completed questionnaires, resulting in a response rate of 66 percent. The data were analyzed by Descriptive Statistics using Statistical Package for the Social Science software version 20.

Results show that the factors that lead to the lack of maintenance of heritage buildings are limited finance, the absence of maintenance guideline and ill-defined maintenance policy. The strategies to overcome the problem include providing a financial budget by the respective authorities, establishing a standard maintenance guideline and revising the existing policy.

The paper is limited to the identification of factors that lead to a lack of maintenance and strategies to overcome the problem for the heritage buildings in Malaysia. The respondents are the owners of heritage buildings in Malaysia. The focus is given to them due to the fact that it will help them in understanding the importance of managing and operating for their buildings.

The results offer value-added information to building managers who are responsible for maintaining heritage buildings. Findings show that good maintenance work on heritage buildings can enhance the value and safety of the building as well as preventing heritage buildings from deteriorating.

The quality of maintenance could be enhanced by focusing on the important variables that affect the quality of maintenance works of heritage buildings.

Limited studies had been carried out in the context of the maintenance of heritage buildings, especially in Malaysia.

The era of digital construction, including building information modelling (BIM), has placed a high demand for a seamless collaboration of people, technology and processes in meeting a project delivery. The project actors involved in a BIM process must ensure compliance with all regulations and contractual requirements from inception. While many studies have disclosed the various contractual implications arising from BIM implementation, little has been examined on the current state of BIM in contract administration practice, particularly in the Malaysian construction industry. This study aims to explore the current state of BIM implementation with specific reference to a design-and-build construction project.

The exploratory case study involved the construction of a public complex. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with the project actors, and document analysis was performed on the project’s contractual guidelines to derive the findings.

Findings from the thematic analysis revealed the following five sequences of activities that guided the contract administration practices, particularly during the pre-contract and post-contract stages of a BIM-based construction project: project inception, tendering phase, detailed design, construction and preparation for the handing over phase. Most of the activities were conducted to deliver the final BIM outputs successfully. Nevertheless, some shortcomings were noted in the project monitoring, the validation process of the BIM deliverables and the BIM players’ competency level in fulfilling the specified BIM contractual requirements.

The study contributes to a practical understanding of how BIM can affect project administration and how a public client can improve contractual risk allocation in future BIM implementation.

This paper discloses the current practices of contract administration to better understand the impacts of BIM management during the pre-contract and post-contract stages of a BIM-based construction project.

This paper aims to study the anti-diabetes activity of the Kombucha prepared from different snake fruit cultivars.

The juices of snake fruits of Suwaru, Madura, Pondoh and Bali cultivars were fermented for 14 days. Anti-diabetes activity of the products was analyzed. Twenty-four male albino Wistar rats were used and randomly divided into six experimental groups, i.e. four groups of the diabetic rats treated with the Kombucha, plus the normal group and diabetic control group. The Kombucha were orally administered to the streptozotocin induced-diabetic rats at 5 mL/kg body weight per day during the 28-day experiment. The fasting plasma glucose (FPG), oxidative stress indices (superoxide dismutase [SOD] activity and Malondialdehyde [MDA] level) and lipid profile of the blood plasma were measured. The pancreas was used for immunohistochemical study and β-cells quantification. Data were analysed by ANOVA followed by Fisher test using Minitab version 16.0.

FPG of the diabetic rats treated with the Kombucha (110.3-189.3 mg/dL) was significantly lower (p = 0.000) than the diabetic control group (413.3 mg/dL). Those were in line with the number of pancreatic β-cells of 42.1 in diabetic rats that lower (p = 006) than those in treated the diabetic rats (61.2-73.5). The treated diabetic rats had lower oxidative stress (SOD activity: 20.9-44.6 unit/100 µL with p = 0.000; MDA level: 0.37-0.48 ng/100 µL with p = 0.000) than those in the diabetic rats (SOD activity: 18.7 unit/100µL; MDA level: 0.84 ng/100 µL). The treated diabetic rats also showed better lipid profile than those in the diabetic control rats. There were cultivar differences, and the Suwaru and Madura snake fruit Kombucha demonstrated the most potential for diabetes management.

This is the first study on in vivo anti-diabetes activity of snake fruit Kombucha prepared from different snake fruit cultivars.

This paper aims at examining the current condition of ancient manuscripts owned by locals in remote areas of Indonesia, which are mostly in poor condition. It is to describe the factors of these manuscript damages and the implications of the damage.

The study employed qualitative design with philological, codicological and anthropological approaches. The participants are manuscript owners and keepers in Western, Central and Eastern parts of Indonesia. Data were collected by direct observations and interviews with the participants.

This paper provides empirical insights on how manuscripts were damaged due to human and environmental factors. These factors have caused the loss of part or whole information in the manuscripts, hence causing disconnected knowledge linkage from past to present.

Due to the selected scope and area of study, this study may lack generalizability. Further studies can be conducted to examine the physical aspect and the content of the manuscripts.

This study suggests the urgency for stakeholders and local governments to preserve the manuscripts by taking specific measures that include preservation training to the locals and conducting a program for digitizing these manuscripts.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how the damages suffered by the local manuscripts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most influential buildings elements in term of the cost for timber restoration works.

The research employed the case studies methods with questionnaires surveys. Two case studies were chosen and questionnaire surveys were distributed to contractors and consultation companies. The cost was identified based on the elemental cost analysis of historic timber buildings.

The restoration of historic timber buildings in Malaysia has grown rapidly, especially in the UNESCO world heritage sites, Melaka and Penang. Data obtained on the restorations of timber buildings show that the most influential elements were upper floors, roofs and walls. Termites’ invasions and the lack of building analysis were found to be the major issue in timber restoration works. In addition, the availability of timber material contributed significantly to the increase of cost for restoration works.

The cost for every element was identified and was used as a reference for new restorations projects of historical, timber buildings. This paper also highlighted the causes for the problems and the factors affecting the cost of timber restoration works. These data are useful information, especially for surveyors and contractors who are involved in the restoration of historic timber buildings. Maintaining or replacing these elements with other material can help to minimise the restoration cost of timber buildings in Malaysia.

Conflict was recognized as a major cause of inefficiency and limited performance of construction projects. Factors pertaining to conflict in construction are vast; however, there have been less recognition of these factors in international construction projects. The purpose of this paper is to provide in-depth understanding of conflict in this context and analyze how it influences project performance.

A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 161 professionals working in Malaysian companies, which are undertaking construction projects overseas.

Analyzing the data using factor analysis revealed six new factors of conflict: external, internal, control-related, knowledge-related, mismanagement, and social conflicts. Further analysis of the data using partial least squares-path modeling (PLS-PM) affirmed a significant relationship between project performance and two factors of conflict only: internal and social. The results also showed that conflict contributes to about 27 percent of the variance in project performance.

This paper provided a clear picture for project managers and team members about specific aspects of conflict and how to mitigate them to attain better performance of international construction projects.

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 administration of a contract by the architect is necessary to ensure the contract is performed according to the conditions of the contract, compliance with related laws and the practices of the construction industry. With the increasing number of housing projects and the limited number of registered architects in the nation, the architect is unable to be hands-on with every project. Hence, the involvement of graduate architects to reduce the workload in building contract administration (BCA) is required. The purpose of this paper is to develop a BCA framework for graduate architects to enhance their work performance in BCA work and to assist them in moving a step closer to acquiring their professional qualifications.

This study adopted a qualitative method where seven housing projects in Malaysia were selected as case studies to conduct documentation reviews and semistructured interviews. The data collected was analyzed using content analysis to develop the BCA framework. Focus groups were used to validate the framework.

This study summarized there are 5 themes (claims and legal matters management, project management, communication and relationship management, quality assessment and management, and design management) and 11 sub-themes (authority matters, building certification, meetings, coordination checklist, letter-writing, contract documentation, building material, design brief, building sustainability and workmanship quality standard, contractor’s submission and building details) that need to be improved by graduate architects in BCA work.

The contribution of this study to the existing knowledge is the development of a BCA framework that enables graduate architects to get a glimpse of architectural professional practice in reality and better prepare them to confront and resolve problems. Besides, the proposed framework could be incorporated into a pedagogy focusing on methods to support construction contract administrators.

Graduate architect plays an important role in contract implementation management when handling building construction projects. Graduate architects had been authorized to manage the projects in construction industry due to limited architects in the country. The capability of graduate architect when manage project is critical in reducing performance barriers encountered. The aim of this paper is to identify critical factors that affect graduate architect's performance during project implementation.

An explorative study was undertaken to provide an insight into actual experiences of graduate architects in contract implementation management. The data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews providing case studies on contract implementation management on housing projects in Malaysia and observation of the actual on-going projects.

The five most crucial factors affected graduate architects' performance related to lack of training in project documentation, failed to obtain professional and peer support in quality and assessment, isolate in role during project coordination, lack of education support in design process and unaware of legal aspects which delayed response to contractor.

This research focuses only on seven housing projects and semi-structured interviews with twenty graduate architects who in charge of those projects. As such, the resulting factors that affect graduate architect's performance are limited and are constrained only to the construction industry in Malaysia.

This research examined the factors affecting graduate architect's performance which is a timely study, as the increasing number of population and developments will provide ample opportunities for them to perform.

The outcome of the study is expected to facilitate graduate architects to devise proactive risk mitigation measures to reduce impact of these factors and improve project delivery.