Reflection on London Visit and Lecture on Innovation

The morning lecture was conducted by Sir Nazali in which he asked us to do a presentation by group based on our class trip to London where we had visited RICS, Channel 4 and Battersea Power Station. The first presentation were only done by 3 groups in which all members in the fourth group were divided into those 3 groups. Briefly the first presentation was only given about one hour to be discussed and then to be put into powerpoint slides. Next was the second presentation where 4 groups were given less than an hour to do a reflection on the visit to Channel 4 and it consists of it's SWOT, innovation and 'how it can help in the Built Environment in the future'. The marks of the group presentation were given respectively by other groups where the second group had scored the highest and also Omarulhaniff had been declared as the best presenter because of his skills in presenting.

The next lecture was conducted in the afternoon after break hour by Sir Mall which he discussed on innovation in the context of Facility Management and also maintenance required regarding on the core business, the end users and innovation of the building. 

First Day in London & RICS UK

15th August 2014

It was our first time going to London and all of us are excited to be there. Our trip starts at 6.00 am and we arrived in London at 11.30 am. Three awesome LJMU lecturers were with us on that day. They were Mr. Nazali Noor, Mal Ashall, and Mike Farragher. Once we arrived in London, the first thing we do were taking a group picture in front of The Big Ben. Then, Mal Ashall leads us around London City and he tried to find the best halal restaurant for our lunch. The best halal restaurant we found were NEDS NOODLE BOX. The food there was okay but it doesn't really suit me. 

Our group photo in front of The Big Ben.

When we'd done eating, Mal then brings us to our main mission on that day which was going to RICS London that is located at the Parliament Square. RICS which is the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors had gave us a great treatment. Three of their directors gave their talk well and we were able to grab many new knowledge from them. The first speaker was Alan Muse, and he talked about the Building Information Modelling (BIM). He gave us a complete introduction about BIM and if I am not mistaken was already mentioned by Mr. Naz during our class. Then, Matthew McDermott took his chance to briefly explained to us on what is the challenges in practicing BIM. Some of the challenges are:

• it was incomplete
• BIM needs software and IT skills but not every computers have enough memory to do it
• people wondering what is the real benefits of BIM

Its a bit different when it comes to James Fiske because he talked about the costing in BIM. He mentioned about Building Cost Information Services (BCIS). BCIS was somehow related to BIM where it provides the benchmark for the cost of building. It was more or less the same with our SMM (Standard Method of Measurement). Right after that, we were lead by the beautiful lady Laura Chadderton for a tour around the RICS building. We left RICS London exactly at 4.00 pm.

 From left : Mal, Mike, James Fiske, Matthew McDermott, me, Alan Muse and Mr. Naz when I was giving RICS some souvenirs from University of Malaya.

From RICS, we went to our hotel, Royal National Hotel London. The hotel was good and after we checked-in, all of us went to Kerisik Restaurant, a malay restaurant somewhere near Paddington. The food was really nice. We had mee kari, asam pedas ikan merah, pengat pisang, teh tarik and other good Malaysian food. We had so much fun when we sang together about 3-4 songs and were interspersed by Mal when he danced a cute dance for us. 

 Kerisik Restaurant here we go!

When we're done eating, then it was a free time for all of us. We split into two groups where Lily Jamal, Thahirah, and I were with Mal, Mr. Naz, and Mike. The rest were the second group and I heard that they were going to Piccadilly Circus. We were actually not split-up into two groups but it was because they were left behind while we were walking together at the Hyde Park that we decided to split into two groups. Anyway all of us were very ecstatic or you can call it jakun in malay, when it was so cold that we can see our breath coming out of our mouth when we were talking. Bhahahaha.

We, the first group was lead by the very fit man, Mal. He leads us to walk for about 8 to 10 kilometres and our first destination was Harrods. Harrods was really cool but we did not even enter the building. Mal then again leads us to walk and walk and walk and he said that we are going to get back to the hotel just by walking. Alhamdulillah for finally he knows that we were very tired of walking so we took the Underground Tube to Russel Square station near to our hotel. And for about 11.30 pm , I can have my rest after getting tired of walking and chasing Mal's walking pace.

It's Harrods!

Photo by Mr Naz, when we were walking around London City.

That's all for 15th August 2014.

Written by: Nurul Azeantiey Suhaimi

End of The Week

8th August 2014

     Today was the day for the Muslim boys to go the mosque to perform the Friday prayer. The mosque recommended by our head tutor, Mr. Nazali (Naz) was Masjid Ar-Rahmah, about 2.2 miles or 5 kilometres away from Liberty Atlantic Point. Naz told us to go there by taxi but we went there by foot. We started walking to the mosque at 12.15 p.m and reached there at 1.05 p.m. It is quite a long journey if you ask us. The prayer finished at around 2.00 p.m. On the way back, we spotted a nice park to hang around. So, we took a walk for a while at the park and suddenly we met two students from University of Liverpool who are both from Malaysia. We talked for several minutes and we went back to Liberty Atlantic Point and had some rest.

   All of the girls went to Ceshire Oak today. Ceshire Oak is a place where there are a lot of outlet which is heaven for shopaholic. They came back to Liberty Atlantic Point around 7.30 p.m. They went there by bus at 12.30 p.m. As for the Chinese; Koh Joo Guan, Jeny, Lucas and Kent; they took a walk to the Albert Dock which have a really good scenery. They came back in the evening at around 5.00 p.m. That is all for today.

Written By : Hannan Hazami

Visit to Royal Air Force, Yorkshire

6^th August 2014

It was strange when the time was seven and a half o’clock in the morning but the sunshine was so bright. Mr. Naz and Mr. Mike had already been waiting for us to gather at the entrance gate of Liberty Atlantic Point. The bus picked us up at seven and a half o’clock right on time and we were heading to the Royal Air Force in Yorkshire straight away.

                In the bus, Mr. Naz and Mr. Mike were having an interactive chat with us and Mr. Mike treated us some drinks such as Diet Coke and Sprite. He was so generous and easy-going that he really impressed us. When we arrived at the Royal Air Force, there was a white man that was wearing a military uniform and a blond white woman already waiting for us at the entrance gate. Then, Mr. Naz walked down the bus and had a quick chat with the woman. Soon, the man took his hat off and introduced himself to us and gave us a very quick brief about what we are going to do and what not to do while we are inside the building. We were not allowed to bring our bags into the building.

                We were greeted by a cup of tea and some cookies before getting into the auditorium where Angela and Mark were going to give us a lecture about how the facilities management works in Royal Air Force. Angela is handling the soft FM while Mark is handling the hard FM. Soft FM has to deal more with business while hard FM has to deal more with maintenance. Both of them highlighted the key factor in the facilities management which is relationship. Facilities manager has to possess networking skills to negotiate with clients like building occupants and contractors. It is undeniable that collaborative partnerships between facilities manager and contractor to create a good working environment contributed in promoting the core business of Royal Air Force, which is to train experienced pilot.

                Later on, Angela and Mark took us around the Royal Air Force and shared their experience on how they proposed a good catering service and a community center where everyone can enter. Most importantly it breaks the hierarchy system and allows every people from low rank to high rank to have a rest in the community center. The community center consists of food junction, bar and children playground. All the services including catering, cleaning, maintenance and etc. are outsourced. Airplane maintenance works are outsourced to a huge company named Babcock. We were very lucky to be invited to have a lunch with the contractors. The contractor was very generous to explain his collaborative partnership with the facilities manager. Sometimes both sides have to come to an agreement on an emergency case like catering service to be operated in the midnight where there is a night training program.

Written by : Chu Kok Wei

Hurricane and Exciting Day

10th August 2014, Sunday.

It has been exactly one week in Liverpool, how time flies. Everyone starts to adapt to the lifestyle here. As today is Sunday, there is no class today!!! Hence, everyone planned to have a visit and shopping around Liverpool. Some of my colleague planned to have a look around the Albert Dock. Albert Dock is a complex of dock buildings and warehouses. It is an old building which is built at 1846 and it was the first structure in Britain to be built from cast iron, brick and stone, with no structural wood. As a result, it was the first non-combustible warehouse system in the world. So it is worthy to have a visit to Albert Dock as nowadays Albert Dock has been named as UNESCO World Heritage Maritime Mercantile City. Around the Albert Dock, there are some other attractive places such as the Museum of Liverpool, Merseyside Maritime Museum. All these museums are free entrance, so we can spend a whole day here.

Some of the boys have another plan, as they went for a visit to the Cheshire Oaks which is the designer outlet shopping center. In Cheshire Oaks, it have a great range of designer labels at discounted price and over 200 outlets are having sales there, so it can be described as a mega shopping center. Spending a whole day there is actually not enough (for girls) but for men, a few hours of shopping should be enough. So the boys only spent a few hours there.

In the other hand, the weather on that day was terrible. It was raining the whole day and all of us are getting wet. The wind is strong and cold. That day should be the coldest day so far in England as the temperature on that day was 12 degree Celsius. We all are freezing but it is a nice experience. The reason why the weather was so terrible that day was due to the Hurricane Bertha that was heading towards UK. According to the Met Office, yellow warning had been issued for Merseyside on that day. However, we actually didn't know about the yellow warning issue. We only knew about it once we all are back from our visit. So, this has taught us a lesson to check the weather before we go out. But luckily, nothing bad happened to all of us. Overall, it was a cold and exciting day.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/ex-hurricane-bertha-liverpool-weather-warning-7589446

Written by: Joo Guan Koh

Sunny Day

5th August 2014

Today is the first day of lecture by Matt, (Matthew Tucker), a handsome male lecturer with height of 6 feet 6. At first, I thought he is just an ordinary lecturer with a simple educational background of having PHD certification. However, after told by other lecturers, then only we know that Matt have been named as a ‘rising star’ in FM magazine before and he is a quite popular character in this field, we are getting more and more admired to him. Besides, the way he teaches us, communicate and involved us in his lecture was really much more different from the way we learnt in Malaysia. He wants us to talk and involve in his lecture, not just him talking to us. He expressed billions of knowledge from his mind to us in a more simple and illustrative way, so that we could understand more. His lecture is really like a ‘sponge’ reaction to us, we keep on absorbing information and knowledge, and never feel bored. Indeed, we did really learned a lot from him and his lectures were really interesting and fun. Now I'm looking forward to meet more other fun and enriched lecturers!

After class at 4pm, we all divided among ourselves as some of us went to buy things from supermarket at Liverpool One, and some of us went back to hostel to prepare for dinner. After dinner session, each of the group members gathered to discussed about the assignment given.

Written by: Chen Sin Yee

First Class

4th August 2014

It was the first day of our class in Liverpool John Moores University. Our class started at 9 a.m. and we have to walk to reach our class which is just a few minutes away from our hostel. We were all excited to see the university for the first time and as we reached our faculty, we could see that it is a modern building that comes with a well equipped classes.

In class, we were given introduction about the whole programme such as on what we are about to learn, what Facilities Management roughly means and where we will be going for our study visits. The introduction was done for us by Mr. Nazali and Mr. Michael. I found the speech from Mr. Nazali to be inspiring as he shared with us all of the troubles he had to go trough to come to where he is now. He had given us some words of encouragement to reach our dreams and goals in life and what I can conclude from his words is that god will always grant us the things we need instead of the things we want. Mr. Michael had given us introduction about the architectural and design aspect of the course and from what I can observe he seems to be a very nice person and are always ready to help us with our problems and questions.

We went to do our enrollment process after lunch at Avril Robarts Library. Our enrollment process went smoothly although some of us had to take a new picture for our student ID card as the picture on the previous card was unclear and the quality was quite dissatisfying. The staffs were very helpful and they did their best in making our enrollment easy for us. The rest of the students who are not having problems with their student ID cards went on to listen to a briefing about blackboard, university printing services and the library facilities. We were introduced to blackboard which is pretty much similar to spectrum that we have in University Malaya. It is an online access for students and lecturers to exchange information, for students to submit their works and for lecturers to grade their students work.

After that, Mike shows the gym to some of us while the rest went out to do some grocery shopping for our flat and we also bought a local sim card for ourselves so we can contact each other easily and more importantly, to update our social media for family and friends back home. I found Liverpool city very interesting with many places to visit and is abundant with beautiful aged buildings. The people we met were friendly and they were very helpful when we could not find our way in the city. We managed to bought some groceries and essentials with a reasonable price from shops such as 99P store and Iceland.

Some musicians we saw near Liverpool One.

Written by: Nabila Mohamad