Building Compliance Assessment is an assessment aimed to investigate the compliance of the existing building against the Uniform Building By-Law (UBBL), State Planning Guideline, Fire Protection Guideline, and other relevant legislation, regulations, or codes. IPM Professional Services, as a professional consultancy firm consisting of professional architect and engineer, experienced in providing Building Compliance Assessment services to our respective local and international clients.

In fact, many buildings in Malaysia failed to comply with the UBBL and local authorities’ development requirements. Commonly we categories into three situations:

1. 1. 1. Legal building without any area extension – Building with the Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC). Compliance with UBBL and relevant regulations.
      2. Legal building with illegal area extension without proper submission – Building with the Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC) but become non-compliance after a series of illegal extensions
      3. Illegal building – Building without the Certificate of Completion and Compliance (CCC). No submission to the local authorities at all since starting.

Due to the above situations, these buildings, especially commercial and industrial buildings, the building owners, buyers, or tenants may face difficulties in getting relevant permits, e.g. business license application, business license renewal, manufacturing license, MQA Accreditation, etc., due to building non-compliance.

Thus, IPM Professional Services provide Building Compliance Assessment, through conduct assessment on building layout, review relevant drawings, documents, and inspect the building and surroundings. By the end of the process, our client will obtain a comprehensive Building Compliance Assessment Report which consists of professional comments on the compliance with UBBL and Local Authorities’ planning guidelines, together with Professional Architect/ Professional Engineer’s endorsement. Rectification cost estimation can be provided based on the client’s need too.

Our Building Compliance Assessment focusing on a few critical aspects, which includes but not limited to the following:

1. 1. 1. Building Setback Requirement
         

         Building setbacks are mandatory requirements by the Urban Planning Department and the Local Authorities (PBT) for Development Order (DO) and Building Plan (BP) approval.

      2. Parking Requirement
         

         Sufficient numbers of parking shall be provided in a premise to meet the demand of the building users who travel to the building using their own transportation. Thus, the provision numbers of parking is one of the criteria considered by the local authority during the evaluation of the DO and BP. The quantity of parking allocated shall depend on the function of the building.

      3. Fire Protection System Requirement
         

         Fire protection system requirements are also varied based on different types and sizes of the buildings (occupancy hazards). UBBL Tenth Schedule listed the different requirements of the fire protection system based on different levels of occupancy hazards.

      4. Travel Distance Requirement
         

         Travel Distance is the distance from the dead-end to the nearest available exit. Based on the UBBL, Seventh Schedule, the maximum travel distance will be 15m for a dead-end room if the occupancy is not more than 6 persons.

      5. Natural Lighting & Ventilation Requirement
         

         Based on UBBL, by-law 39, the room designed shall be provided openings with natural lighting minimum of 10% of room floor area. The room shall have openings that allow free airflow with a minimum of 5% of room floor area.

      6. Other Requirements
         

         Besides the requirements discussed above, buildings shall also comply with other requirements such as perimeter planting, landscape area over the whole development area, building plinth size, building height limit, minimum land size, etc. All the requirements are different based on different building types.

In short, new building owners, buyers, or tenants is strongly advisable to conduct building compliance assessment to determine whether the building they own or planning to buy or rent can operate comply with all relevant legislation, regulations, or codes. This helps the owners, buyers, or tenants to make the wiser judgment in their business planning, and also eliminate the unnecessary difficulties in getting the business permits due to the building non-compliance issues.