A Framework for User Requirement Assessment in Technical Education Facility Planning: A Knowledge Engineering Approach

Preparation of a facility planning document for a technical education institution facility is a complex process. Building new facility or redevelopment of existing facility is necessary when the institution undergoes program expansion or program change. In designing complex facility, an appointed facility designer needs clear information and knowledge. The problem in facility planning involved the capturing of adequate and relevant knowledge on user requirements. This difficulty leads to plans not well designed and optimized, and decisions on physical facilities specifications not fully supported. A quality project brief must address the operational needs of the end user. In this paper, a user requirement assessment framework was proposed. The framework helped the planning coordinators to capture and organize relevant knowledge using knowledge engineering concept so as to assist decision makers in producing a suitable brief project document. A combination of qualitative methods, ethnography and non- participatory observation to uncover the hidden relationships using Malaysian Polytechnic's Facility Project Briefing implementation examples and cases. A simple decision making process was incorporated in a prototype to showcase the user requirements and decisions made from the captured and stored knowledge. The findings of this paper contribute to the development of a meaningful and functional project brief through the user requirement planning framework with the application of knowledge taxonomy and ontology in knowledge engineering approach.