Examining issues and challenges in building and property management

Prof Venkateswara (top right) during the talk

UTAR Department of Building and Property Management organised a webinar titled Building and Property Management Continuum— Difficulties and Challenges on 8 March 2022. Invited to present the webinar was Prof. S. Venkateswara, Secretary-General of the Malaysian Building Management Association, a multi-stakeholder organisation that represents the collective interests of all significant actors in Malaysia’s building sector. He also serves as a corporate adviser at Stratified Property Management Sdn Bhd, a well-established property and building facilities management company in Kuala Lumpur.

He kick-started the webinar by giving a quick overview of property and building administration in Malaysia, emphasising the distinction between “property” and “building”. He defined “property” as any item or resource that has retained worth, whether tangible (fixed assets) or intangible (intellectual assets). The term “property” refers to a wide variety of belongings, whereas “building” refers to any construction built on land that has kept value. Only constructions established on a plot of land are referred to as “buildings”.

He also offered some insights, stating that there have been several setbacks and limits in the successful and effective transfer of administration and maintenance of partitioned buildings from the developer to the owners. According to him, these are mostly the result of inadequately kept financial and accounting records, frequent changes in the management of office employees, lack of communication between developers and management corporations, and a variety of other factors.

As a result, Prof Venkateswara made several proposals, such as requiring purchasers/owners to compel the developer to file for strata as soon as possible and join the management body to supervise the process. In the event of a mixed-use development project (residential or commercial) with many blocks, it is preferable for the owners to apply for the establishment of a sub-management corporation (sub-MC) for each block or category of building use.

Top row, most left: Prof Venkateswara with other participants

The webinar ended with a group photography session.