Abstract. Recently, there had been reduction in annual budgetary allocations to public universities in Malaysia due to some economic tensions. This situation had left many institutions in question with the options of scaling down their expenses as well as sourcing for other means of meeting up with the shortfalls in allocated funds. Hence, it affects the sustainability of the building itself. This paper is an attempt to look at the possibility of reducing incidents that could lead to expending unbudgeted fund to rehabilitating property unfortunately destroyed by fire on campus, in addition to limiting risk to life and interruption of academic and business activities. Several research had been conducted on FSM, nevertheless very few consider Higher Education Institutions (HEI)s holistically. Hence this research intends to fill that gap.
Enormous investments had been made in Malaysian education sector of the economy especially in the higher education towards fulfilling a target of creating an attractive environment, conducive to learning and academic excellence. Building facilities account for a significant portion of investments in the sector. Since no building has immunity against fire, it has become imperative to research ways of ensuring the safety of built facilities and users from fire disaster. This research proposed a framework for effective fire safety management for buildings in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions. The report aims to display the results of the pilot study conducted among staff and students from selected universities in Johor Malaysia before carrying out the core survey to collect information from respondents. The pilot study sought to minimise errors in the questionnaire, makes the survey runs smoothly, facilitate the response rate, and provide a useful and valuable inquiry. The results include the descriptive statistics, reliability test, content and construct validity, and the normality test. The summary of the reliability test for each construct of the users' questionnaire, are Management, 0.910; fire safety equipment/system, 0.907; building components safety design, 0.917. Furthermore, users' awareness and knowledge of fire safety, 0.948; users' attitude on fire safety, 0.885 and the effectiveness of fire safety management have a value 0.913 for Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient. The aggregate Descriptive Statistics results for Users/Occupants Questionnaire show mean values between the ranges of 3.34 to 3.76. The questionnaire had low dispersion and standard deviation values of less than 1. The values of skewness and kurtosis were all within the recommended threshold of-/+2, an indication that all the constructs of the study were normally distributed. The results are a favourable indicator for proceeding with the core survey using the instrument.
Malaysian education sector of the economy, particularly the higher education, had been making huge investments towards fulfilling a target of producing an attractive environment, conducive to learning and academic excellence. Building facilities account for a significant portion of investments in the sector. It has become imperative to research ways of ensuring the safety of built facilities and users from fire disaster since no building has immunity against fire. This research aims to develop a framework for effective fire safety management (FSM) for buildings in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions. This report displays the results of the pilot study conducted among staff from the facilities management, occupational safety health and environment (OSHE) and security departments from selected universities in Johor Malaysia prior to carrying out the core survey to collect information from target respondents. The pilot study shall help to minimise errors in the questionnaire, ensures the smooth running of the survey, facilitate the response rate, and provide a useful and valuable inquiry. The results include the descriptive statistics, reliability test, content and construct validity, the normality test, and factorability. The summary of the reliability test for each construct of the FSM Stakeholders' questionnaire, are Management and maintenance, 0.962; fire safety equipment/system, 0.921; building components safety design, 0.965, and the effectiveness of fire safety management have a value 0.916 for Cronbach alpha coefficient. The aggregate Descriptive Statistics results for the stakeholders' questionnaire show mean values between the ranges of 3.08 to 4.07. The questionnaire had low dispersion and standard deviation values of less than 1. The values of skewness and kurtosis were all within the recommended limit of-/+2, which indicates the normal distribution of all the constructs of the study. The results are a positive indicator to use the instrument for the primary survey.
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