Monday, October 31, 2011

The International Construction Conference 2011 - Kuala Lumpur

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a 2 days conference. If it wasn't for my boss who had to go to Jakarta, I wouldn't have to attend it. Anyway, the conference was a totally different industry, the construction industry. This is a huge industry with huge players. The event was jointly organized by UiTM (my former university) and The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) which was sponsored by CIDB Malaysia. I have never heard of CIOB before so it was new to me.



The welcoming address was done by Associate Professor Dr. Masran Saruwono, Dean of Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying, UiTM. Opening address was done by Dr. Yeow Yoon Foo, President of CIOB Malaysia. Keynote Address and Official Opening was done by YB Dato' Sri Ir Dr. Judin Abd Karim, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer, CIDB Malaysia.

A little disclaimer here. I am not from the construction industry and what I'm going to write is from my own perspective.  If for some reason the information is not correct, misleading or gibberish, I would really appreciate any comments or feedback.



Session 1 -  Paper 1 : Case Studies in Sustainability for Major Construction Projects: The Veritas Experience by Mr. David Mizan Hashim.



The introduction given by the moderator to the first speaker was quite lengthy but really interesting to listen.



Once Mr. David Mizan gave out his talk, everybody including myself became very attentive towards what he was talking. He is quite an interesting speaker. Let's check out his slides:



17 of the 20 tallest buildings in the world are in Asia and the Middle East.



For the first time in history, more than half of the world's population is urban.



Three types of Green Building Rating Tool from Singapore, Malaysia and USA were compared.

There were 4 case studies were featured,The LCCT, Menara Binjai, Menara Chua and PKNS HQ. I kind of get the understanding of what the speaker message is since I've read about the Malaysia Green Building Index.



In this case study, the speaker mentioned about conserving energy by making an open design for the building.



If you're familiar with engineering, the diagram above does make sense to you.



Some design view of the LCCT.



Case study 2: Menara Binjai. Don't ask me where the building is, I have no idea.



The objective of the building design is to bring as much as natural light inside the building thus a lot of glass is used.







Case Study3: PKNS HQ. I have live in Shah Alam for almost 4 years during my study years. I love Shah Alam and Kompleks PKNS is one the earliest shopping mall my father used to bring me when I was little.



Did you know that the lake in Shah Alam is owned by PKNS? I didn't know that. It is said that PKNS wanted to fence the entire lake area in Shah Alam since it is located their private land. Of course there were an uproar from the people in Shah Alam so they decided to leave it open to public. So the designer proposed this design:



The idea was to open up the building so that the public can go through instead of around it.



The building also is targeted to score a Platinum Level on the GBI scale.



I do gain a lot of knowledge just by attending this conference but I don't want to write about the whole content of the conference. It's not because I am lazy or so, it's because this industry is not really related to what I am paid to work for. So, I'll just summarize this entire post with photo galleries taken using my mobile phone down below:


international Construction Conference 2011 Kuala Lumpur - Day 1



international Construction Conference 2011 Kuala Lumpur - Day 2

Friday, October 28, 2011

Using Microsoft Word 2007 to Blog

This is a test post using Microsoft Word 2007. I've never tried this before eventhough I've been using Microsoft Word for like the rest of my working days.

Anyway, I'll see if I can adapt to the way of how MS Word will publish my blog post.

Until my next blog post.