Building Maintenance Management Systems

Building Maintenance Management Systems Building maintenance management just like the Cinderella of construction industry. This is because building maintenance management team has to do various job and bear the function of other parties, namely architects, surveyors, engineers, or facilities managers. Building maintenance management also has never been recognized in its own right (Allen, 1993). There are numerous definitions of building maintenance as it different to different people. According to the Chartered Institute of Building, building maintenance is defined as work conducted to keep, restore or improve every facility, that is every part of a premise, site and its service to an acceptable standard. The accceptable standard is determined by the balance between the need and available resources. While White suggest that maintenace also is similar with controlling the condition of the building so that its feature lies within specific regions (White, 1969). Other definition comes from Bushell and quoting from BS 3811, th at defines maintenance as a combination of any action carry out in order to perpetuate the things in or restore it to an agreed condition (Bushell, 1985). Another more practical definition mentioned by Allen is the combination of all technical and associated administrative actions to pertuate an item or restore it to a condition that it can perform its desired function. Hence, building maintenance is very crucial as it is required since the beginning of the construction period. However, its importance was not recognized (Allen, 1993). Maintenance is needed to ensure the building perform well and the best over its life cycle (Olanrewaju, 2009). A regular and good maintenance of a building may enhance the sustainability of any building either it a heritage or non-heritage building (Arazi, 2010). Lee (1984) has elaborate more that maintenance is also required in order to ensure that buildings are used effectively and economically as possible (Lee, 1984). Meanwhile, according to the inv estopedia, efficiency mean the degree of performance that reflects a process that uses the lowest amount of resources to create the greatest amount of outcomes. Efficiency is an important character as all resources such as time, money and raw materials are scarce. So, it is makes sense to conserve the resources while maintaining an acceptable level of outcomes or a general production level. Efficient also can be simply said as reducing the amount of wasted resources. Therefore, ensuring efficiency in building maintenance practices in this paper means the work undertaken in order to preserve and conserve a building to enhance the value of a building is done with the lowest amount of resources without wasting it. Nevertheless, there are five objectives of building maintenance that are mentioned by Alner and Fellows (1990). The objectives are to ensure that the buildings and their associated services are in a safe condition, to ensure the buildings are suited for use, to ensure that the state of the building fulfill all statutory requirements, to run the maintenance work necessary in order to maintain the value of the building stocks physical asset and also to run the work needed in order to maintain the quality of the building. THE WAYS TO ENSURE EFFICIENCY IN BUILDING MAINTENANCE PRACTICES In order to ensure a building is keep, preserve, restore and improve without wasting all resources, a number of efficient ways can be carried out by the property manager, building maintenance management or any related party. Firstly, the maintenance management team should involve in the design stage of the construction to draw some strategies in order to make sure the efficiency in building maintenance practices over the life cycle of buildings. A number of the design strategies mentioned by Nayanthara (2010) are design for adequate safety, design for maintenance needs, design for the environment, plan for easy maintenance and design for efficient access. Design for adequate safety is the most crucial design strategy for maintainability of buildings. A proper design for the load carrying, joint design and detailing, structures suitability and the piping are able to avoid many failures such as cracking and leaking of the building, therefore can provide the adequate safety againts thos e failures. Design for maintenance needs is also important strategy as it can reduce the maintainability cost in the future. For example in the design stage of the construction, the maintenance team has make the option to use the low-maintenance materials, components and elements in constructing the building. The selection of those materials, components and elements in design stage may lessen the maintenance cost in the future. While, there are two fragments of environment under the design for the environment, that are micro-environment and macro-environment. Micro-environment can be describe through the degree of exposure to the external climate, level and the nature of usage. While macro-environment can be evaluted as location of building and different zones such as industrial, coastal area, urban and rural. The environment aspect should be taken into account while designing the building as Malaysia has tropical climate which is high humidity, uniform temperature and has abundant rainfall throughout the year. Nayanthara also mentioned that in the design stage, the builders team should plan for easy maintenance in the future. This strategy is related to the design for the environment strategy. The builders team should choose the material that is durable in order to less maintenance work and cost, for example, the type of paint for external wall must be weather shield so that it is long last and no need to repaint the building frequently. In addition, design for easy access for maintenance work such as roof and basement can ensure the efficient maintenance work (Nayanthara, 2010). The second way that can be adopted to ensure the efficiency in building maintenance practices is by controlling the quality of construction or workmanship. It is very important to make an assurance of the quality during the construction stage to avoid failures such as cracks, spalling and leakage. Assurance of construction quality could be determined by the consistency of materials in the design stage and construction stage. The builders team must strictly follow the planning during design stage. In addition, the election of good contractors, consultants and efficient workers who have well experience are also essential to assure the quality of the building construction. Quality assurance in the construction stage may help in reducing the failures in the future and hence, the maintenance of buildings will be efficiently done (Nayanthara, 2010). Strategy for maintaining buildings can be split into three strategies namely corrective, preventive and condition-based strategies (R.M.W. Horner, 1997). In ensuring the efficient building maintenance practices, a good strategy for the maintenance work should be properly done by the building maintenance team or else, the cost for maintenance will rise. The most crucial is preventive maintenance schedule. The preventive maintenance schedule must be done after the completion of the building over its life cycles. Preventive maintenance schedule is to preserve the physical of the building and wipe out the corrective maintenance cost. An efficient preventive maintenance schedule includes daily maintenance, weekly maintenance, monthly maintenance, quarterly maintenance, bi-annually maintenance and annually maintenance. Daily maintenance for building such as cleaning the toilets, common areas, ground areas, vacuuming elevators must be done everyday, even more than once a day. Daily or routi ne maintenance is very important among others as it involve major operating expense. Cleaning and housekeeping work must be carefully scheduled and controlled because costs can be easily become excessive (Kyle, 1999). With the existence of preventive maintenance schedules, buildings and equipment in the building will last longer and run more efficiently. Building maintenance team also will be seen as a professional team as they work with the efficient preventive maintenance schedule. The forth way that can be adopted is by using computer-aided system in the building maintenance work. In maintaining buildings, computerized system is very necessary because a lot of information and data such as the completion date of buildings, the contractors and engineer that involved in construction, the financial statement, information of past maintenance work, and etc that need to be recorded, saved and remembered. In addition, property atributes such as basic property information like address, telephone number, person incharge for maintenance , area, number of floor and age; component information like type and model number of boilers and pump; and maintenance information like inspection cycles and painting cycles have to be recorded and saved. Computerized system is much more efficient as it is fast in recording the ample information, retrieving any data needed and capable in analysing the data (Pitt, 1986). If the building maintenance team work manually with the substantial d ata, all the works will be slower and not efficient. Maintenance schedule also can be done by using computerized system, indeed it is more effective and practical for maintenance team. Last but not least, the implemention of Malaysias Building and Common Property Act 2007 is necessary in ensuring the efficiency of building maintenance practices, especially for strata property such as condominium, apartments, gated community developments, flats, commercial buildings like offices, shopping complexes, mixed developments and industrial buildings. Malaysias government provide this act after realizing that there is a lack in Housing Developers Act and the Strata Title Act as well as existence of wide gaps between developers and purchasers, for appropriate maintenance and management of buildings and also common property (Isma, 2011). All this while, there are many problems arise between the developers, purchasers and management corporation (MC) of strata properties. Some of the problems are developers failed to apply for the Strata Title because the management corporation (MC) is unable to be formed. The management corporation (MC) could not be formed due to the committee s of the management corporation (MC) must be solely the owner of the unit and the management of the building is totally managed by them without interfered by the developer, but, the management corporation (MC) can only be formed after one-quarter of the aggregate share unit has been transferred to the owner. The management corporations power to practices their duty is also limited and not effective (Isma, 2011). Other than that, the problem also arise when there are defaulting developers and inefficiency property managers who take advantage and trying to make huge profits by providing lower quality services but charging a high fee to the purchasers (Tiun, 2009). So, to eliminate the problems that are arise before, Joint Management Body (JMB) and Commissioner of Building (COB) is formed under the Malaysias Building and Common Property Act 2007. The Commissioner of Building is created to ensure that all parties play their role effectively. The efficient building maintenance practices coukd be formed by the empowered of Commissioner of Building to issue warrant to those purchaser who does not pay the maintenance charges for six months and it is mandotary to all developers to submit the audited maintenance account yearly to the Commissioner of Building (COB) (Isma, 2011). With the provisions, building maintenance work for strata properties will be more transparent, efficient and no longer developer who take advantage towards purchasers.

Renoir

In this paper I will be writing about the â€Å"Gaze† which is present within impressionist artist Renoir’s painting The Umbrellas. The gaze gives us a lot of insight of the figures and the relationships we may be viewing. In the case of Renoir’s work the insight the viewer gets is the actions and preemptive thought before a meeting of two people looking on as a spectator in the very same crowd. By using blurring techniques of background figures Renoir succeeds in creating a scene that appears like a glance, like a moment in time the viewer stepped upon and intently stared. The gaze present in Renoir’s, The Umbrellas (c. 1883) is meant to provoke the conception of assessing a situation from afar, and endeavoring on the chance of action before your subject of interest notices your intentions. Renoir places the viewer in the role as the spectator watching the scene of a young woman carrying a basket, lingering behind her with his full attention is a man as if leaning in to speak to her or offer her shelter from the rain, as she has none. This woman, attractive, is gazing away from the man towards the direction of the viewer eyes glazed, vulnerably clutching her dress. To her right in the crowd the spectator makes eye contact with small girl continuing the gaze as her mother is watching her intently, and sure enough would follow her daughter’s gaze catching the viewer staring. This gaze makes full circle whilst the spectator awaits this chance to approach the young women passing by the crowded street vastly filled with brush stroked umbrellas. Renoir plays with the projection of a moment in time of a man meeting a woman or two people who will miss the opportunity and pass by. The gaze freezes this brief moment in time making it as if the viewer themselves are within the crowd weighing the situation before it occurs trading â€Å"on contemporary anxieties of the necessity of weighing up a situation and acting quickly in order to evade detection.. †(Smith, 40). True to the impressionist way being that â€Å"the impressionists attempted to paint what the eye actually sees, rather than what the brain interprets from visual cues. (Gilbert, 459) Renoir painted The Umbrellas as a glance over a crowd and with the face of the flaneur man behind the young woman of interest was clearly less detailed and blurred. Blurred as if glanced over quickly an uninteresting figure to the viewer, whilst the woman is in clear view and draws the eye of the spectator as if they were in the crowd and caught off guard by her presence. The way the woman’s â€Å"eyes seem removed from her immediate surroundings: their mysterious searching look contrasts with the carefree, wide-eyes glance of the little girl and the protective downcast glance of her mother. (Kern, 33). As well as how Renoir positioned the body of the woman looking outwards in contrast to the innocent and straightforward stance of the little girl connect and contrast one another. This contrast continues the gaze from person to person connecting the spectator to the scene creating the feeling of anxiousness and fear of being caught staring whether by the mother or the young woman of interest herself. As well the little girl holding the hoop is very prominent as the viewer would see her staring at him and take notice not only to her but to the mother that they would fear would also soon catch the gaze. This piece by Renoir is very much successful in creating a feeling of anxiety in the spectator due to his use of placement of figures and brush stroke technique of blurring out non-prominent figures. Though most of all it is successful due to the gaze that lies present in the image of this busy city street view. As one looks upon this painting you feel as if you yourself have stopped at a moment in time to look upon the scene contemplating your next actions. As the gaze reaches the end of its journey you feel an urge to look away before a figure feels your stare upon them and turns from the painting and looks at you.

Love vs. Sex

Many people pair love along side of sex, thinking the two go hand in hand, when in reality, they don’t. Sex is an action out of lust, the fact that people can have casual hook ups, with no attachments illustrates this. Love is a deep emotion between two people, this leads to commitment, usually marriage, and sex, but a different kind, one that is purely an act of love. By combining the two in a literary work, it detracts from the aesthetic quality of it, undermining the message behind the poem, making it no longer about love, but lust.The poem â€Å"To His Coy Mistress† is a perfect example of how placing love and sex together in a poem takes away from the work, leaving the reader less impacted by the poem as a whole. Love is an amazing emotion, something that no one can quite understand, and that never changes. Love has always been a large part of the human culture, something that will always be relevant, even in years to come. The need to be someone’s â€Å"on e and only†, what they live for from day to day, to have someone care about you that much is priceless.It is the need to be desired, and taken care of, that drives people to find love. You find someone with common interests, and you talk, you go out on a few dates, and then it happens– you begin to fall for that person, completely in love. Love leads to commitment, and then marriage, something that is so sacred, you promise to â€Å"love and cherish† that one person â€Å"’til death do you part†, never leaving their side, hurting when they hurt, joyous when they are joyous.An example of this from â€Å"To His Coy Mistress† is found in the beginning of the poem, â€Å"for, Lady you deserve this state, nor would I love at lower rate†, this is stated after the narrator tells a young lady about how beautiful, and wonderful she is, trying to sweep her away with loving words, attempting to make her fall in love with him. Once you have this s ort of love, you can link sex with it, but only then. Sex is an act of love that has been reserved for a husband and wife, the marriage bed, this act of sex is not of lust, but out of pure feeling and trust for the other person.By you giving your body to someone, you are showing them that you are also giving them your heart, proving your love to them, in the greatest way possible. Without love, sex is nothing but an action, being caught up in the moment, taking advantage of an opportunity that has been placed before you. In the next stanza of â€Å"To His Coy Mistress†, Marvell states this â€Å"that long preserved virginity, and your quaint honor turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust. † Here, the narrator revels his true intentions, seeking only a one night stand, persuading the young lady to seize the opportunity, and spend the night with him.Sex is thought of so casually now a days, hardly having any meaning behind it anymore, with that being said, you can have s ex with anyone you choose to, obviously having no romantic emotions for the other person. Hooking up with someone after a night at the bar cannot be compared to the interaction between people who have been together for years, working on building their relationship and an emotional connection. To be able to take something so pure and sacred and make it apart of an interaction with a stranger takes away from the meaning of love and sex, you can no longer pair the two together.For an author to link sex and love together in a poem, story, or essay is undermining the meaning and value of love, and the role it plays in sex. Marvell begins the poem wooing the young lady, â€Å"an hundred years should go to praise, thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze, two hundred to adore each breast, but thirty thousand to the rest† such romantic words that hint at love. Then the idea of love is washed away with lines like â€Å"the grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do th ere embrace†, making the narrator’s true intentions of sex known.By mixing love, and sex together, the poem’s meaning loses its impact, no longer being romantic, but only a well planned pick up line. â€Å"Let us roll all our strength, and all our sweetness, up into one ball and tear our pleasure with rough strife, thorough the iron gates of life† solidifies the narrator’s true intentions, separating love from sex. â€Å"To His Coy Mistress† clearly shows that love and sex cannot be linked together in literary works without undermining the principle of love and taking away from the message the author is trying to convey.

Effects Of Poverty On Children s Social Interaction Skills

Effects of Poverty on Children’s Social Interaction Skills Salanya Inmaung University of San Francisco November 2014 Effects of Poverty on Children’s Social Skills As the American population grows, more and more children are born into poverty. Even in the world’s wealthiest nation, you will find 45.3 million people struggling to put food on the table. These are families of poverty - families with children who do not have the appropriate basic resources to properly raise their children. The official U.S. government poverty threshold for a family of four is currently set at $23,021. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, in the United States alone, the percentage of children living in families below the poverty level increased from 15.6 percent in 2001 to 21.4 percent in 2011, and has continued to increase. Now, there are 16.1 million stunted in the rut of poverty. That is 16.1 million children are unable to properly grow and develop into a healthy member of society because of unsatisfying environmental factors. There is little information about the may mental health implications of spending early years in poverty. There are many consequences of growing up in poverty. Depression, communication issues, and academic issues are just the tip of the iceberg. My research will be focusing on how living life in poverty has an immense impact on children’s social interaction skills. First of all, it is important to know the statistics of children inShow MoreRelatedStudents Of Poverty. As A Teacher, You Are Going To Have1596 Words   |  7 PagesStudents of Poverty As a teacher, you are going to have students with different interests, races, backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. It is your job to get to know them, understand their differences, and make them all feel as equally important and valued as any other student. 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