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Abstract. In Malaysia, the construction sector is one of the important sectors that contribute to economic growth and employments. However, a major concern facing the construction industry is the growing rate of delays in project delivery. In the worse cases, the projects were abandoned due to some reasons when the contract period ended. Abandoned building defines as construction work that has been continuously stalled for 6 months or more, during the project completion period or beyond the scheduled date of completion. When the projects become abandoned, it gives an adverse effect on many parties such as the developer, contractor, consultant and also client. According to previous researchers, the abandonment of building causes a serious problem and need some mitigation plan to avoid this problem from occurring. This study will investigate the fundamental factors that contribute to the abandonment of building and projects in Malaysia based on the current data of the abandoned building in most states in Malaysia. The data was collected from the respondents who is in the construction industry and had experience working with abandoned housing project. Form the respondents perspective, it shows that the main factor contribute to the building abandonment is due to the financial problem facing by the developer company.

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The investigation of the effect of curing conditions on self-healing of pre-cracked concrete containing palm oil fuel ash (POFA)-concrete is presented. Concrete grade 30 was used and POFA cement replaced 10%, 20% and 30% of the total weight of ordinary Portland cement [1].The compressive strength was tested after 7, 28, 60 and 90 days cured in water in order to investigate the strength development of the POFA-concretes. In addition, the pre-crack (hairline crack) concrete was examined under compression load to determine the effectiveness of self-healing POFA-concretes after different curing conditions. Four types of curing condition, namely air, room temperature, wet and dry, and water curing were tested. An ultra-pulse velocity (UPV) test was performed after 7, 28, 60 and 90 days of curing to monitor the self-healing progress in the POFA-concrete. The results show that POFA-concrete witha 20% replacement level recorded the highest compressive strength. It was also revealed that the UPV readings increased significantly with increased curing age. The results showed that the selfhealing ability of pre-cracked POFA-concrete at 10% replacement level increases significantly for the water curing condition. From these findings, the optimum POFA replacement level was recorded at 20% for the strength, while inclusion of a 10% POFA replacement level was appropriate for self-healing concrete.

The major cause for corrosion of steel reinforcement embedded in concrete due to chloride penetration has been the great research effort. The use of nano metaclay in UHPC increase the strength and helps the formation of micro pores by acting as a filler thus improve the chloride penetration resistance characteristic. The aim of this study is to evaluate the chloride diffusion of UHPC using RCPT and chloride penetration depth. Four (4) series of UHPC comprised of plain UHPC and a series of nanoUHPC incorporating 1%, 3% and 5% of nano metaclay were produced. It is reported that the compressive strength of nano UHPCl exhibits higher strength up to 10% compared to plain UHPC. The results showed that UHPC containing nano metaclay also significantly affect the chloride diffusion coefficient. As regards to the results, inclusion of 1% nano metaclay in UHPC led to noticeable benefit towards strength and chloride resistance.