101
Proposition 1: Knowledge capture can be improved when design
professionals know what the required knowledge are and when they are needed during conceptual design phase.
Proposition 2: With improved knowledge capture, design professionals can
improve their knowledge transfer and application during conceptual design phase.
3.3.3 Selection of a Unit of Analysis
The unit of analysis for this study is a team of six 4
th
year architectural students in a public university who won a competition to design a building project. There are some justifications
to choose this unit of analysis; the reasons are: -
There are restrictions in Malaysia in attending conceptual design phase, because this stage is client-based.
- It was difficult to get real people and real projects, because they are not keen to
document their activities. -
4th year students are junior architects and therefore are able to complete medium size building projects. Furthermore, they considered 100 of mechanical and electrical
requirements for concept design. -
Medium size building project is appropriate due to time limitation for a PhD research.
- Outdoor projects are risky due to the following:
x There was no ongoing project and possibility to attend project meetings.
102 x It is not a common practice for architects to work with mechanical and
electrical engineers in Malaysia. x The actual professionals are not keen to be observed and also do not like
recordings their activities taken. x We had no access to a real project due to time limitation for PhD research.
x Architects are in practice for green building projects and they are not experts in this field.
For more reliability of collected data, more details about the process of improvement of skill of students are explained below. According to Nissen and Levitt 2002, skill level of team
members could improve through conducting training courses. In this way, they can perform better on their tasks. Nissen and Levitt also report that the level of rework was down
considerably. They used Simvision software to emphasize the improved performance of projects arising from improved skill level of team members. Their study supports the use of
Simvision in this study for evaluating the workflow performance. To improve team members’ skills, training courses were conducted before starting conceptual design please refer to the
technical report UPMFRSBEDITR4, 2010 – Please refer to Appendix 1 for summary of this report. Firstly, many professionals such as Associate Professor Doctor Nor Mariah
Adam mechanicalelectrical expert from Mechanical Engineering Department, had lecturing sessions for required mechanical and electrical requirements. Next step was conducting
research about the required technologies for green building projects. Then, students presented their literature review about abovementioned requirements refer to the published technical
report for more details. Using this process, they found all the required considerations about the required technologies. Finally, they attempted to consider all the technical requirements
through conceptual design stage. Afterwards, they presented their proposed concept to the
