Malaysian Construction Companies Research Articles

A Framework of Contractual Protocol for Building Information Modelling (BIM) Implementation in Water Treatment Plant Projects

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming a comprehensive collaborative process in the construction industry. Since the introduction of BIM in Malaysia in 2009, the technology adoption rate is slow when compared to other countries of the world. Most of the construction companies in Malaysia have an insight on the BIM concept but are yet to implement it in the management of their construction projects. By the year 2020, the Malaysian government will make BIM mandatory, this makes it important to carry out research on the possible applications of the technology. The aim for this research is to establish a Framework of Contractual Protocol for BIM-Water Treatment Plant projects in Malaysia. This research focuses on four (4) objectives which are: (a)to explore the Contractual Issues on BIM Implementation for Water Treatment Plant projects. (b) to identify the Contractual provision on BIM Implementation for Water Treatment Plant projects. (c) to determine the Requirement Components of Contractual Protocol for on BIM Implementation for Water Treatment Plant projects. (d) to establish a Framework of Contractual Protocol for on BIM Implementation for Water Treatment Plant projects. A qualitative method of enquiry was used for this study in Klang Valley using semi structured interview. The responses received were analyzed by using SPSS. The result of the analysis showed that the contractual issues posed by the adoption of BIM, the contractual provision, the requirement component of contractual protocol and to establish the framework of contractual protocol for BIM Implementation for Water Treatment Plant projects. The implication of this findings is that to prove the studies on legal and contractual aspect of BIM implementation in water Treatment Plant Projects is increase to meet the demand of the implementations of BIM technology is regarded as the future of construction industry, which makes it very important for the industry.

Influence of organisational structure on risk management of Malaysian construction companies

Influence of organisational structure on risk management of Malaysian construction companies

Occupational Safety & Health Management and Corporate Sustainability: The Mediating Role of Affective Commitment

BackgroundOccupational safety & health management (OSH) has garnered greater attention for its significance in promoting corporate sustainability for organizations in recent decades. The construction industry, in particular, is a major contributor to Malaysia's thirst for corporate sustainability in order to provide long-term support for the country. Thus, the main tenet of this study is to examine the mediating effect of employee affective commitment on the relationship between OSH and corporate sustainability. MethodsA questionnaire was administered to 273 full-time employees of listed construction companies in Malaysia. Smart PLS software version 3 was used to test the proposed model and hypotheses. Both the measurement model and the structural model were evaluated. ResultsAccording to the findings, OSH and its dimensions are positively related to employee affective commitment. Employee affective commitment, on the other hand, has been found to be significantly related to corporate sustainability and its dimensions: economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Apart from this, the prominent results reveal that employee affective commitment partially mediates the relationship between OSH and corporate sustainability and its dimensions: economic, social, and environmental sustainability. ConclusionThis empirical finding adds to the existing literature in explaining how OSH and affective commitment led to corporate sustainability. Several implications are offered to various stakeholders, such as construction companies, policymakers, and relevant regulators.

STRATEGIES BY THE CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES IN MALAYSIA TO SURVIVE FROM THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Many construction firms in Malaysia suffer a significant setback when the economy crashes due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the imposition of restricted movement orders in Malaysia, most construction projects in the country have been put on hold or delayed. This paper identifies the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic on the construction companies in Malaysia, and the appropriate strategies to be adopted by the construction companies to survive from the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic. The main data used in this paper were from literature reviews and questionnaire survey. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software is used for data analysis to achieve the objectives of this study. The major findings indicate that the significant impacts of Covid-19 pandemic are project delay, tight Covid-19 regulatory compliance, and enhance of site safety due to SOPs. The strategies adopted by the construction companies, among others, are stricter site management to reduce material waste, and stricter financial management. This research is deemed to be appropriate to facilitate the construction companies in Malaysia several strategies they can adopt for them to may remain significant to the industry.

The Absence of Smart Technology as One of The Key Factors of Transportation in Modular Construction: A Case Study in Malaysia

Modular construction is a new method introduced to meet the modernisation agenda in the Malaysian construction industry. It provides various benefits to the construction industry, such as speedier construction, quality improvement, waste minimisation, and sustainability. Despite all the promoted benefits, it still needs to be widely implemented in the Malaysian construction industry due to a need for knowledge and readiness towards modular construction. The construction industry player needed to be more sceptical about applying this new construction method in their project. Further, the application’s success in modular construction is highly associated with good transportation management; however, achieving good transportation management may be challenging because it depends on the manufacturer's understanding of designing and allocating the module. Understanding modular construction is essential to select the suitable modular type because it affects the whole process and transportation. This research aims to investigate the essential factors to be considered in the transportation of modular construction. The data collected is by interviewing modular construction companies in Malaysia. The study reveals that transportation should be taken as early as the design stage. Under the transportation process, among the factors that need to be considered are the size of the module, types of trailers, road or highway regulations, suitable route, time for transport and technologies. It is concluded in this paper that contractors managing modular transportation still have to take smart technology factors into account. Therefore, the findings of this study are hoped to be a reference for modular construction companies and other construction industry players in terms of modular construction transportation considerations.

Optimizing the Performance of Construction Companies using Goal Programming Model

The construction industry is the driver to the social and economic development of a country. However, the construction industry is capital intensive and resource-reliance with high risk. These characteristics of the construction industry show high vulnerability to financial uncertainties. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the financial performance of the construction companies in Malaysia with goal programming (GP) model. This paper found that ECONBHD, GADANG, and MELATI have high liabilities while GADANG and MELATI have low profits. The powerful GP model has highlighted that the construction companies have high liquidity and solvency risks and could face problems to sustain their operations. This study could help the companies to determine the decremental and incremental values to reach the benchmark values for better financial performance.

Empirical analysis of employees' commitment, organisational fitness elements and intention-to-stay in the Malaysian construction companies: mediating influence of organisational commitment

Empirical analysis of employees' commitment, organisational fitness elements and intention-to-stay in the Malaysian construction companies: mediating influence of organisational commitment

Stock Prices’ Response Towards Macroeconomic Shocks in Listed Malaysian Property and Construction Companies

This study seeks to determine the impact of macroeconomic shocks on both sectors’ stock prices. Due to the similarity in their activities, this study aims to discover if changes in macroeconomic variables affect their stock prices. The stock price movement behavior of the stocks from these two sectors is investigated to assist investors in estimating the profitability of the stocks in property and construction sectors in Malaysia and to assist the government in developing policies to curb speculation in the stock market. The impact of macroeconomic shocks on both sectors’ stock prices is evaluated to provide insight to investors and policy makers to prepare them for sudden changes in government monetary policies. This is investigated through the impulse response functions (IRF) and variance decomposition analysis. Annual data from 1995 to 2013 are evaluated and the IRF results indicate that interest rate changes influence stock prices the most while trade openness has the least effect on the stock prices.

Organisational Learning Capability: Measurement, Validation, and Application in Malaysia

This study aimed to validate the measurement of organisational learning capability originally developed by Chiva et al. (2007) in the Malaysian context. This organisational learning capability scale comprises 14 items grouped into five dimensions, namely experimentation, risk-taking, interaction with the external environment, dialogue, and participative decision-making. An analysis of the scale’s content validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity was conducted using a total of 251 valid survey responses obtained from Grade 7 construction companies in Malaysia. The findings showed that the five dimensions of organisational learning capability are highly suited for measuring organisational learning capability in the Malaysian context. The validation of the organisational learning capability measurement provides useful insights to organisations wishing to develop a learning culture or enhance their learning capability. This study also enriches the literature by proving that the organisational learning capability measurement is a valid and consistent scale that can be applied at the organisational level and across different cultures and sectors.

Workplace safety and hazards awareness among the China construction companies in Malaysia

Construction safety continues to be one of the issues that draw the attention of the public. This study aims to investigate the factors to improve awareness towards workplace safety and hazards among the China construction companies in Malaysia. Quantitative research method was adopted in this study. Self-administered questionnaire was extended to 79 workers in China construction company in Malaysia with the use of purposive sampling. Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) were used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results show perception and compliance of workers are positively related to the awareness of workplace safety and hazards. On top of that, the study present diverse perspectives towards awareness of workplace safety and hazards by examining the perception and compliance of the workers in the China construction companies in Malaysia. Moreover, high awareness was found to be a significant mechanism leading to lower accidental rates in construction. However, construction projects are getting more in quantity and getting bigger in scale all over the country, future research should consider more factors and include more construction companies. In overall, this study highlights the essential role of workers’ perceptions and compliance in raising their safety and hazards awareness in reducing accidental rates in the construction industry.

Key factors leading to employee turnover intention in construction companies in Malaysia: does ethnic group matter

Key factors leading to employee turnover intention in construction companies in Malaysia: does ethnic group matter

Readiness of Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises Construction Companies for Building Information Modelling Implementation

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has shown its efficiency in helping the construction industry players. The BIM helped to achieve better integration of project information and to enhance collaboration between stakeholders and the industry players from the early phase of projects until the end. Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) have been under-represented in studies on BIM adoption. Although the technology to implement BIM is readily available and rapidly maturing, the adoption of BIM is still slow. Malaysian government support the adoption of BIM-oriented Integrated Design (ID) approaches in their national markets, however, the implementation of BIM software support systems among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia is considered inadequate. In terms of the implementation of information technology, the construction sector in Malaysia still lags behind other sectors. To have a better knowledge of BIM in SMEs, it is important to first identify the major barriers to BIM adoption in SMEs and then examine potential solutions. Hence, the main motivation of this study is to investigate the readiness of Malaysian SMEs construction companies for BIM implementation, to determine the challenges of BIM implementation, and to develop a strategy to overcome the challenges. An online questionnaire survey was conducted and as many as 115 responses were collected. A quantitative approach was used for this research. This study uses a descriptive analysis method which comprised of structured questionnaires developed from reviews of past researches. The finding of this study indicate that BIM adoption in Malaysia is still relatively low. Many actions are needed to promote BIM adoption among construction SMEs in Malaysia.

Performance Evaluation of Construction Companies Using Integrated Entropy–Fuzzy VIKOR Model

The construction sector plays an important role in a country’s economic development. The financial performance of a company is a good indicator of its financial health and status. In Malaysia, the government encourages the construction industry to develop an advanced infrastructure related to health, transport, education and housing. In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the operations and financial performance of construction sector companies have been affected recently. Additionally, uncertainty plays a vital role in the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process. Based on previous studies, there has been no comprehensive study conducted on the evaluation of the financial performance of construction companies by integrating entropy and fuzzy VIKOR models. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an MCDM model to evaluate and compare the financial performance of construction companies with an integrated entropy–fuzzy VIKOR model. A case study is carried out by evaluating the listed construction companies in Malaysia with the proposed model. The findings of this paper indicate that the company ECONBHD achieves the best financial performance over the study period. The significance of this paper is to determine the priority of the financial ratios and ranking of the construction companies with the proposed entropy–fuzzy VIKOR model.

Retrenchment Strategy and Firm Performance: Evidence from Malaysian Construction Companies

Retrenchment Strategy and Firm Performance: Evidence from Malaysian Construction Companies

“I Want to Serve, but the Public Does Not Understand”—An Approach to Employees’ Intention to Stay in the Malaysian Construction Companies

This paper explicitly clarifies an employee’s goal to voluntarily stay in his/her current employment. A large volume of research has concentrated on corporate environments on the causes of workforce turnover. Nevertheless, little was done to investigate workers’ desire to remain, which was the essential parameter in determining their stay in the construction sector. Therefore, this research was undertaken to explore the relationship between job embeddedness (off-the-job and on-the-job and the intent of staying in Malaysian construction companies with the mediating impact of continuance commitment. For the analysis, a simple random under probability sampling technique was used. Of the overall 280 samples surveyed, 243 responded and used it in the report, 86.8% of the response rate. A structural equation modeling approach was used to analyze the direct and indirect relationships as drawn by the hypotheses. This research showed that the component of the off-the-job, on-the-job embeddedness and intention to stay were substantially linked. At the same time, continuance commitment plays a full mediation between the convergence of off-the-job, on-the-job and the intention to stay. These findings suggest that construction companies in Malaysia need to consider organizational and community embeddedness relationships along with continuance commitment in the invention of programs designated to influence workers’ intention to stay on their current jobs.

Performance Evaluation of Construction Companies in Malaysia with Entropy-VIKOR Model

Performance Evaluation of Construction Companies in Malaysia with Entropy-VIKOR Model

Key factors leading to employee turnover intention in construction companies in Malaysia: does ethnic group matter

Key factors leading to employee turnover intention in construction companies in Malaysia: does ethnic group matter

Does government policy matter? Factors influencing contractors' risk attitudes in the Malaysian construction industry: A structural equation modelling analysis

One of the critical factors responsible for the successful management of construction projects is individual factors. These factors play a significant role in the decision-makers' attitudes towards risks management. Many previous studies regarding the management of construction projects have focusedon the factors contributing to the success of risk management. However, little attention has been given to factors severely affecting the decision-makers' risk attitudes with particular reference to an individual's risk factors in the construction industry. Therefore, this study aims to identify the factors affecting contractors' risk attitudes and then determine its relationship with government policy. Theoriesof planned behaviour and organisational control wereused to develop the theoretical framework that investigated G-7 contractors in the Kuantan Pahang, Malaysian construction industry. A review of relevant literature and questionnaire was employedto identify the factors affecting contractors' risk attitudes (personal factors). 112copies of a structured questionnaire were analysed with a response rate of 80%. Structural Equation Modelling SEM was utilised to test the hypotheses developed for the study. The results of this study,through SEM,proved that personal factors (working experience, professional competence and physical health) have a significant influence on contractor risk attitudes in the Malaysian construction industry. The findings of this research also confirm that government policy (rules and regulations) plays a moderating role in enhancing the relationship of personal factors affecting contractors’ risk attitudes in construction companies in Malaysia. The findings of the study provide more understanding of the personal factors that affect contractors' risk attitudes to facilitate contractors' decision-making process and serve as a useful reference for further studies in the field of construction project management.

ORGANIZATION CHARACTERISTICS: CAN THEY INFLUENCE THE CONSTRUCTION INNOVATION?

Heavy constructions are increasingly becoming more complicated, demanding increased innovative methods, and greater technological advancement. The complexity of the industry, generally has been described as multi-faceted and highly fragmented with significant problems such as communication breakdown, conflicts, and disputes. The lack of organization characteristics can apparently limit the effort of the construction industries to adopt the technology and innovation. Hence, this paper aims to investigate to the influence of organization characteristics namely construction type, presence of trade unions, and professional and trade association affiliation towards the construction innovation. In order to achieve the research objectives, mail surveys have been conducted among the construction companies in Malaysia. A total of 703 questionnaire surveys were mailed to randomly selected construction companies that operating in Malaysia and registered as G7 contractor with CIDB. The number of returned usable surveys totaled 383, yielding an effective response rate of 54.4%. All the organizational characteristics proposed have been found to be positively correlated with construction innovation. Apart from suggesting the direction of future construction industry study, this paper is valuable in providing insights for the contractors in implementing innovative construction technologies that can be used to devise strategic marketing plans and ultimately for enjoyment of competitive advantages.

Development of an impact-on-performance index (IPI) for construction projects in Malaysia: a Delphi study

Over the past decade, studies on measurements, factors, and indicators of construction companies’ performance have been spread in the construction management literature. There is adequate evidence that an increasing number of construction professionals have adopted, during the last decade, the impact-on-performance (IP) as a tool to support their decisions. Due to numerous benefits of evaluating the IP in construction, it becomes essential to conduct research in the area of key performance indicators (KPIs). Nevertheless, no comprehensive and systematic research studies in this area have been conducted, as indicated by this systematic research review. This paper reports an empirical study to formulate a model to assess the IP for construction companies in Malaysia. Real-time Delphi survey questionnaires were distributed to 15 respondents from Malaysian construction experts. The survey identified eight KPIs to evaluate the IP. These KPIs included: (1) cost, (2) time, (3) quality, (4) productivity, (5) safety, (6) environment, (7) satisfaction, and (8) communication indicators, respectively, ranked by their importance. A formula for calculating the IP index (IPI) for construction companies in Malaysia has been derived. Construction senior executives and project managers can use the index to measure, monitor, and improve the performance of their companies.