Complexity in refurbishment of services system for historical buildings in Malaysia

Building refurbishment is an important sector in the Malaysian construction industry. High demand for refurbishment projects mainly contributed by increase the number of building renovation, extension and extensive repair works. However, refurbishment projects are difficult to manage compared to new-built projects. This due to uncertainty factors, which are inherent in the projects. The uncertainty of refurbishment project is reflected in the difficulty of getting design information during the design process. As a result, most of refurbishment project end up with high cost and time variances. Therefore, the main objectives of this paper are to present the factors that contribute to the uncertainty in refurbishment of services system for historical building and show how they affect the overall performance of refurbishment projects. Triangulation technique is used for research methodology, which consists of review of literature, semi-structured interviews with 15 architects and postal questionnaire survey that involved 234 respondents. From 234 questionnaires sent out, 82 questionnaires found to be suitable to form a database for analysis. Descriptive and inferential statistics are used in data analysis. The result concludes that refurbishment of services system for historical buildings is complex and difficult in which variables availability of design information, ease of access to building and client’s needs were affect performance of the projects