Halimah 18FEB ELPIIC UMK 2013

ProcediaSocial andBehavioralSciences Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00

(2013) 000–000

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

ELPIIC 2013

Evaluation of Learning for Performance ImprovementInternational Conference, Malaysia, 25 – 26 February, 2013

A Framework for User Requirement Assessmentin Technical Education Facility Planning: a

Knowledge EngineeringApproach

Halimah Che Hassana*aPolytechnic Research & Development Center, Department of Polytechnic Education,Ministryof Higher Education,

Malaysia

AbstractPreparation of a facility planning document for a technical educationinstitution facility is a complex process. Building new facility orredevelopment of existing facility is necessary when the institution undergoesprogram expansion or program change. An appointed facility designer needsclear information and knowledge to design this complex facility. The problemin facility planning is in the capturing of adequate and relevant knowledge onuser requirements to assist the facility designer during the designing stage.This difficulty leads to plans not well designed and optimized, and decisionson physical facilities specifications not fully supported. A quality projectbrief must address the operational needs of the end user. In this paper, auser requirement assessment framework was proposed. The framework helped theplanning coordinators to capture and organize relevant knowledge usingknowledge engineering concept so as to assist decision makers in producing asuitable brief project document. A combination of qualitative methods,

* Halimah Che Hassan. Tel.: +603-8891-9220; fax:.+603-88919322E-mail address: [email protected]

2 Author/ Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000

ethnography and non-participatory observation to uncover the hiddenrelationships using Malaysian Polytechnic’s Facility Project Briefingimplementation examples and cases . A simple decision making process wasincorporated in a prototype to showcase the user requirements and decisionsmade from the captured and stored knowledge. The findings of this papercontribute to the development of a meaningful and functional project briefthrough the user requirement planning framework with the application ofknowledge taxonomy and ontology in knowledge engineering approach.

© 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review underresponsibility of Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, Malaysia

Keywords: user requirement; project brief; knowledge engineering

Author/ Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000 3

1. Introduction

Facility planning management requires managing diversified activitiesand tasks relating to elements of Facility Life Cycle (FLC).Generally, FLC begins with preliminary planning, followed bypreparation of planning documents, design, construction, operation andfinally maintenance. Coordination of various professionals are neededin the process of complex facility planning with the objective ofproviding quality facility complex with reasonable cost and minimalcritical errors. Facility planning consists of several phases forcomplex facility planning (Muther, 1974). Technical educationfacility consists of various hands-on learning spaces making it aknowledge intensive environment for an education facility planner.This paper discusses the facility planning in general and emphasis ison issues related to the preliminary planning. A frameworkintegrating knowledge management, collaboration and decision makingas a basis for user requirement assessment in facility planning at thepreliminary planning stage . These three elements form an intergratedframework with each element having its own function. The case study inthis research looks into education facility planning which requirescomplex planning process and different strategy in gathering userrequirements. Based on experience of the writer who had been involvedin technical education facility planning for almost twenty yearsspecifically the planning of polytechnics in Ministry of HigherEducation, planning public technical education facility is a tediousand difficult process. The concepts of collaboration and decisionmaking are not new, but the way they are implemented are stilltraditional and laborious. Brainstorming was widely used andcollaboration was more of cooperative way of arriving at any decisionswithout much reference to technology.


Knowledge and knowledge management is a concept which has beenaround for some time and the processes involved is coming to maturitythough there are differences and variations depending on applications.Dawood, 1967, had abridged and edited the work of Franz Rosenthal whohad translated the work of Ibnu Khaldun, the Muqaddimah from theArabic version which explained knowledge and its uses. Franz Rosental,1970, produced a book discussing solely on knowledge. Most of thedefinitions were philosophical and applications or practices mentionedwere much less structured. Understanding of knowledge, knowledgemanagement, collaboration and decision making processes are importantas they are embedded in the facility planning process. Facility userrequirements are sets of knowledge embedded in a planning document,referred as project brief document produced during preliminaryplanning stage .There were many studies on briefing process but most were more

concerned with the process rather than the output which is the projectbrief document itself. In this paper, the researcher focusses on thequality of the contents of the project brief document, in short theproject brief, as it reflects the user requirements and the facilityspecifications set forth by the facility end-users. At this earlystage of facility development project, the responsibility ofproducing a usable and precise project brief. A project brief is acommunication medium between the architect and the user as thisdocument will be used by the architect to design the facility.Discussion in this paper focusses to the development of a suitablebrief project to give the architect a good guide so that the facilitydesigned would be as close as possible to the desired facility.

2. Knowledge Flow in Briefing Process

In executing the planning activities, a planner normally follow aplanning process tailor-made to match his or her planning objectivesand goals. A systematic plan would be achieved through severalplanning phases which form a planning process. A general planningprocess can be summarized as follows, though there are many availablevariations:

Information and knowledge gathering Problem identification Developing goals and objectives Developing alternative plans


Evaluating the alternative plans Plan decision. Implementing the chosen plan Monitoring and reevaluating

In summary, planning is a cyclic process. It’s dynamicm is neededotherwise any development would not improve the facilities and wouldnot satisfy the user needs at any particular time. Knowledge flowduring the briefing process follows the established generic knowledgemanagement system (Rahinah, 2006) , summarised in six processes(Turban, 2001) i.e. capture knowledge, refine knowledge, storeknowledge, manage knowledge, disseminate knowledge and createknowledge as depicted in the figure below:

Fig. 1. Cyclic Model of Knowledge Management System (adapted from Turban,2001)

2.1. Knowledge Management System

The difficulties encountered in project briefing is often due to lackof knowledge and information to answer questions related to thoseprocesses. The continuous problem for the planners are normally inproviding the right statements of user requirements and whether it’sspecification is over or under accepted standard. The suggestedframework would be a guide to the means of accomplishing the tasks

Captureknowledge

Refineknowledge

Createknowledge

Manageknowledge

Store knowledge

Disseminate


necessary in the facility planning process, in this research is inproducing a suitable project brief.

New knowledge will be generated when existing knowledge combined withsomething else and. knowledge can be renewed in the ‘create’ processand captured. Project briefing process is about managing userrequirements’ statements. User requirements are knowledge content ofthe document. Knowledge is dynamic and when harnessed effectively, itcan sustain the ability to continuosly compete and innovate. KnowledgeManagement (KM) is a general term but the complexity of the KnowledgeManagement System (KMS) is tremendous. The knowledge flow in briefingprocess such as above enable the project brief to be documentedthrough collaboration and decision making starting from knowledgegathering until decisions made among the facility users andsubsequently handed over to the architect for designing work. Theproblem lies in the quality of project brief content (Bogers, 2008),many of the them are not clear enough for the architect to interpretthe users’ needs from the document. The project brief contentsconcentrate more on quantitative aspects of the requirements but noton qualitative aspects. The architect needs to understand how thefacility will be used, what are the activities to be carried out inbrief so that the resulting design will meet the aspiration of theorganisation, in this case the technical institutions.

2.2. Case Studies

The researcher had conducted case studies in polytechnic educationsystem in Malaysia using a combination of qualitative methods i.e.document search, ethnography and non-participatory observation. Withnearly 20 years of working in an environment of delivering technicaleducation and the development of these technical institutions, theresearcher understood fairly well the qualitative aspects of theproject brief. Through document search of a number of project briefdocuments, the output of preliminary facility planning for facilityconstruction projects carried out from 2001 till now, findings showedthat the qualitative aspects of the project brief were lacking. Forthe more recent project brief for newer facility projectconstructed , the researcher together with the user community wereinvolved in workshops preparing the document. The activities in theproject briefing workshop involve intense dicussions as part ofdecision making process through collaboration of user communities of


various technical field. Because of the time constraint, the emphasison quantitative spesifications of the planned facility were givenpriority for inclusion in the project brief document. The semanticrelationship among the knowledge entities put forth in the documentwere inadequate compared to the specifics such as the number ofclassrooms, laboratories and utility requirements. The briefexpressions such as ‘the wet training kitchen for the hotel and catering diploma programshould be located at the end of the block on the ground floor for easy waste disposal’ . Itwas up to the architect to make visits to existing facilities to learnmore of the operational activities of the users.

2.3. Collaboration

The facility development projects’ processes become a cooperativeenterprise in which educators, architects, consultants, contractorsand other agencies each has a definite different function inconnection with each major decision. The planner has to be in constantcommunication with the architects. Easy access to information andknowledge for the architect while doing his detail planning anddesigning is necessary. Communication is a special skill andmiscommunication often results in expensive flaw in design offacility. In the case of facility planning, communication is amongstthe members of different professionals, different bodies of knowledge,talents, interests and even the temperaments of educators andarchitects sometimes lead to potential miscommunication. An effort tobridge this communication gap is important and collaboration is thusan essential part of the process in order to make new facilitydevelopment a smooth process. A well written educationalspecifications of user requirements is needed and the planning ofeducational facilities requires cooperative efforts from variouspeople and not be expected from architects alone (Ongwela, 1980) toproduce good detail architectural drawings.

2.4 Decision Making

While communication and collaboration is important, the procedures andstrategies for decision making are equally important to achieveplanning goals. A procedural guidelines for decision making isessential. Educational programs today cover many areas of instructionrequiring professional decisions in facility planning. The plannerneeded to discuss with different interested parties (users and


stakeholders) to select the best fit facility plan from a fewalternatives derived (Muther, 1974). The facilities required must bethe output of the decision processes involving many people, lay andprofessional, and must be organized into a written educationalspecifications as a means of communicating them to the architects.There is a lot of decisions to be made regarding educational facilityplanning. These includes :

Agreement on scheduling of project Agreement on education programs or courses Selection of furniture, loose and built –in Selection of equipments Agreement on layout alternative including support services Agreement on procedures adopted for procurement processes

(equipments, furnitures.etc) decisions on all issues related to project at every stage of

implementation

3. The conceptual briefing framework

Considering the above aspects, combining KMS, collaboration anddecision making processes, theconceptual framework for the preparation of the project brief documentwas proposed as in the figures below (Halimah, 2005):

Fig.2 Schematic framework for KMS in project briefing process


Fig.3 Conceptual framework for KMS in project briefing process

3.1 Knowledge gathering, storage and use

Much of the knowledge gathering activities were carried out at thebottom part of the hexagonal pyramid as there were abundance ofinformation and knowledge to be considered, but after rigorousselection through collaboration between users and planners, thealternatives were selected for further knowledge refinement throughdecision making process by the expert users and stakeholders. Theoutcome was extracted and recorded in the project brief. Storedknowledge in the document will be used by the architects in designingphase of facility development.

3.2 Knowledge base (KB) and knowledge engineering (KE)

Narrative way of recording knowledge is time consuming, tedious anddifficult to compile. This is a drawback to the effort of increasingqualitative content in the project brief. However, with the advance oftechnology, semantic relations among knowledge entities can berepresented. Knowledge engineering is a new term to many but it hasbeen around for some time and those individuals in computertechnology had applied KE to many applications in the expert systems.KE had never been applied to construction environment and technologyusage in this environment is slower compared to other areas (Kareem,2011).


In this study, the researcher had looked into the possibility ofintroducing KE into the framework as a way of storing knowledge, bothquantitative and qualitative aspects. The repository can accomodate aknowledge base (KB) of user requirements, not just a digitised formatof project brief document. The main components of KE are knowledgetaxonomy and knowledge ontology. Ontology concept had been used inbioinformatics much earlier as the biology works environment is richwith taxonomical knowledge (Steven et al, 2000). Both declarativeknowledge and procedural knowledge can be represented using axioms inontology development. Once represented, the knowledge can be stored inorderly manner using Artificial Intelligent concepts in KB. Theadvantages of KE application is many, one of which is knowledgemanipulation in which new knowledge can be generated from this KMSdeploying KE and KB.

4. Knowledge representation in a prototype

Another part of this study involves knowledge representation of userrequirements in facility planning. The following example is an extractof the major study in this area by the researcher. Space planning isone of scope chosen in this study as facility planning itself is avery broad scope. Planning makes spaces’ arrangements an orderly andlogical layout as per user requirements. Most of the literatures infacility planning refer to manufacturing facilities’ planning whichinvolve manufacturing processes. In technical institutions, for thepurpose of prototype simulation of knowledge representations, twoelements were considered concerning the student and lectureractivities in the laboratories. A prototype decision making system wasdeveloped using AI language WIN-PROLOG version 4.32 to simulate apolytechnic laboratories’ planning for Electrical EngineeringDepartment. Examples in table 1 shows knowledge representation inontological logic expressions or axioms and in table 2, knowledge arearranged in taxonomical order. These axioms are the basis for AIlanguage coding according to AI language syntax. In a prototypedevelopment, further treatment of these axioms create sequences ofexpressions toform RULES. RULES consist of small pieces of knowledge.Usually pairs of entities or concepts representing knowledge make upthe ontology. IF...THEN rules can answer the user’s questions of”How” and ”Why” (Bratko, 2001). This indicate that the rules in AIprogramming language can be used to represent knowledge both


declarative and procedural, meaning that processes in organisationscan be codified. Table 1. A list of learning spaces for Electrical Engineering Diploma Program Represented in ontological expressions or axiom statements

Electrical EngineeringLearning Spaces (CODES)

Axiom in Ontolological language

1.Mini Lecture Theatre (MLT)2.Class Rooms (CR)3.Project Presentation Room(PPR)

Workshops

1. Electrical Installation (EI)

Laboratories

1. Electrical Principles (EP)2. Electronics (EE)3. ECAD4. Computer Programming(CP)5. Telecommunication (TLC)6. Data Communication(DCM)7. Measurement (MT)8. Electronic Repair (ER)9. Computer Hardware (CH)10. Computer Repair (CR)11. Project (PP)

ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learninga:MLT)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learninga:CR)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learninga:PPR)

ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:EI)

ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:EP)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:EE)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:ECAD)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:CP)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:TLC)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:DCM)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:MT)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:ER)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:CH)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:CR)ClassAssertion( a: elec_eng_learning a:PP)


The first expression indicates that MLT is a learning space in Electrical Engineering Department , and so are the rest of the expressions .

Table 2. Categorisation of learning spaces in Electrical Engineering Department (a taxonomical of knowledge)

Learning Spaces in Electrical Engineering Department (CODES)

General Workshops Laboratories

Mini Lecture

Theatre(MLT)

Class Rooms

(CR)

Project

Presentation

Room (PPR)

Electrical

Installation

(EI)

Computing Electronic Electrical

ECAD

Computer Programming (CP)

Computer Hardware (CH)

10. Computer Repair (CR)

Electronic Repair (ER)

Electronics (EE)

Telecommunication (TLC)

Data Communication

(DCM)

Electrical

Principles (EP)

Measurement (MT)

Project (PP)

.

5. Conclusions

References

Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton R. A. (2000). The artof writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51- 59.

Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (1979). The elements of style. (3rd ed.).NewYork: Macmillan, (Chapter 4).


Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (1994). How to prepare an electronicversion of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.),Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281-304).New York: E-Publishing Inc.

Appendix A. An example appendixAuthors including an appendix section should do so after Referencessection. Multiple appendices should all have headings in the styleused above. They will automatically be ordered A, B, C etc.

A.1. Example of a sub-heading within an appendixThere is also the option to include a subheading within the Appendixif you wish.

Halimah 18FEB ELPIIC UMK 2013

Documents