Self reflection

        Throughout 2 months reflection of myself, I found out some of my weakness. Thus in this post, I plan to reflect upon mistakes made in this subject.

       The first weakness of mine is lack of planning and controlling of my own schedule. I usually start doing my assignments at the 'last minute' and this might affect quality of works. As I should have carried out Task 1 at an earlier stage and regularly update my padlet wall. But I fell behind schedule to carry out tasks 1 and tasks 2, even though I had regular posts in my blog. Hence, this should improve in my future life and career by create a proper timetable to solve the problems and complete all the tasks on time.

       My second weakness is poor communication and distribution of tasks with my group members. Even though I understand that the first step to inspect the existing building condition is very important and we take attention to inspect the building condition and surrounding environment. But poor distribution of tasks makes us collected same information and some information is not collected. I finally understand that a good distribution of works not only can help to lighten someone's workload and also improve the quality of the works. Therefore, I should have taken this opportunity to work closely with my group to prepare myself for future works.

       Lastly, the most important things I learn through this module are self reflection. It is an effective approach to help me find out my weakness. As reflection is not an act of recollection but supposed to lead to improvement, so that I should take further steps forward by developing upon my reflection.

Investment Appraisal Techniques

 Actually I have learnt all those capital investment methods in TAR University College before but I forgotten how to calculate as long time no practices it. I’m very interesting in calculating the investment appraisal techniques as all these methods are easier and faster to get the cash flow for the projects.

Through this lesson, I have refresh my mind on the way to determining the most profitable project and forecast the present and future value by two methods which are traditional and modern methods. The traditional method is to calculate the Pay Back Period and Average Annual Percentage Rate of Return (ARR) and the Modern methods is to calculate the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Net Present Value, and Internal Rate of Return (IRR).

I am doing fine with all those traditional and modern methods as I have the basic calculation foundation before. Hence, it is not a difficult things for me to calculate the cash flow for new proposed development and determine the viability of my proposed development in term of profit.

After this lesson, I had refreshing my mind on all the investment appraisal techniques and it is very useful in future working career as it can help me to determine the viability of each projects. Furthermore, I had also learnt an important skill which is Managing Costs under the CIOB Professional Competencies Framework.

Building adaptation or refurbishment

Due to the high sustainable awareness in UK, there is trends where many clients choose to refurbish their building instead of demolish compare to Malaysia. Refurbishment helps to upgrade the building performance to a higher standard in order to increase the lifetime of the building.

Before this, refurbishment was my decision and I had decided to refurbish some parts of the building instead of demolish. After this lesson, I felt that my decision is right and workable as refurbishment considered into the sustainable and conservation aspects.

Refurbishment should be encouraged to practice as it brings many benefits than the demolition especially for historical building. However, the decision still need depend on the condition of building. If there are many defects arising in the existing building and it requires higher cost to carry out refurbishment than the demolition, so it is not suitable to refurbish the building. Therefore, a condition survey of the existing building should be taken into account before making decisions.

Through this lesson, it greatly improved my knowledge on the factors to be considered before making decision of refurbishment. 

Sustainable development

Before this lecture, sustainable development and green building are ranked in the same category in my mind as I always thought that sustainable development is green building. However, throughout the information given by Ms. Liew, I realized that green building is only consider the building itself and it is concern more about the technology. While sustainable development need to look into all aspect and it is concern more about needs.

Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is getting popular in the current construction industry and it can be achieved through the balancing between social, economic and environmental aspects. I would like to propose a sustainable development at Matilda Street site as I learnt that with a successful implementation of sustainable development, environmental impact, over-exploitation and also rate of global warming can be reduced.

Market appraisal and viability of the project

With applying the market appraisal to proposed development, we need consider the SWOT and PESTLE analysis. It helps us to determine the viability of the Hostel development to be built on site.

I’m fully understood the SWOT analysis as I had applied it in previous assignment. I also learnt the PEST analysis previously but the PESTLE analysis is new to me and it is quite interesting as it included 2 new terms which is Legal and Environmental.

SWOT Analysis

PESTLE analysis

Through this lesson, I learnt that both analysis are very important during pre-development stage. PESTLE analysis is use to identify the suitable propose development. After that, SWOT analysis takes place to identify the viability of this development. It analyse the internal strengths and weaknesses of the proposed development and external opportunities and threats faced by it.

This lesson enhances my knowledge in execution of market appraisal technique. It helps me to expose to the skill of assessing the environmental risk factor associated with a development in CIOB Professional Competencies Framework.

Planning policy

At the beginning, I think that learning about the planning system in UK is useless as it is different and may not be applicable in Malaysia construction industry. Through the information given, I realize that although both systems are different, but I will still learn some skill that benefits me in future by going through the process of searching and analyzing the relevant information.

Through this lesson, I learnt that before decide the type of building to be proposed, there are many information need to obtained from Sheffield City Council website such as zone and restrictions on land, requirement of planning permission and procedure of planning application until the submission. This helps me learn the ways to analyze and filter the important information through lots of new and complicated information. 

Hence, this lesson enables me to learn on the skill of managing information properly and decision making as stipulated under CIOB competencies framework. I learnt to effective utilize resources correctly and search the important information in the right direction so that correct decision can be made by eliminate unnecessary information.