SYNOPSIS

IEM Jurutera Bulletin January 2020 issue featured Y.Bhg. Dato’ Mohammad Hamdan bin Haji Wahid,  the Director-General of the Fire & Rescue Department of Malaysia (FRDM) and he had raised the issues of high rejection rate of submission plans both from the Architect and Engineers and ended with this “CONCLUSION - With the soon-to-be-implemented professional training programmes, registration and star-rating system for PSPs, Dato’ Mohammad Hamdan believed that the approval rate for fire safety proposals for developments will improve and the number of submissions rejections will be reduced.”

IEM have received the PSP training modules from FRDM which is very comprehensive covering the Uniform Building By-Laws. This would impact our Civil Engineers who are the PSP when building factories and next would be the SP training modules. The roll out would be in the Klang Valley.

All buildings to be erected must comply with UBBL and this generally categorized into 2 aspects:

1. Interpretation of the UBBL clauses and inevitably there will be grey areas where clarifications
    required from theBomba officers, is this being done?
2. The design of all the firefighting systems which must be in accordance to Malaysian Standards,
    are our members competent in this area?

The questions raised are:

1. Why was there a high rejection rate as mentioned by DG and now a need to train the SP?
2. Was it because of the practice of Copy and Paste in the design and await Bomba to pick these
    mistakes?
3. Whilst the UBBL clause 245 Approval of DGFR “ (2) Plans, drawing and calculations…..”
    Engineers are governed by Engineers Act under the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM),
    why don’t FRDM inform BEM of these incompetent SP then BEM review their practicing certificate?

The talk is for members who are SP to bring forward their concerns and collectively through IEM Professional Practices Committee to write to DG of FRDM on the matters.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

Ir. Gary Lim Eng Hwa
BE(Mech.) NZ, Mgt Dip. FIEM, P.Eng, Asean Eng.,
AT31000 (Approved ISO31000 Risk Management Lead Trainer)

Gary is a member of the Building Services Technical Division and member of the Fire Advisory Board of the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and a Management Diploma from New Zealand. He is a Professional Engineer registered with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM).  In 2016 he obtained Approved ISO31000 Risk Management Lead Trainer Certificate from G31000 Institution.

Currently, he conducts courses regularly on the concepts and design in the area of Fire Engineering and Plumbing Engineering at all the IEM branches in Malaysia. He also conducts courses with Malaysia Institute of Insurance on these topics: The Art of Property Underwriting Profitability and Essence of Survey Report; Applying Fire Engineering Knowledge in Property Survey and Loss Control; Enterprise Risk Management & Business Continuity Management.