Multiple reasons. All these while we have been using RIBA as a gauge: whomever RIBA recognises, we automatically recognise them too. That is, until we realise RIBA recognition does not help in graduates getting a job elsewhere. It is just a standard that people follow, but doesnt carry any professional recognition where it counts. It also deprives Malaysia from getting graduates from the rest of the non-RIBA world.

And to make things worse, even if the school is accredited by RIBA, doesnt mean their graduates achieve the standard that LAM requires.

So in the end, LAM decides to conduct ALL recognition process of the graduates individually. It means you can now study anywhere you want and later get yourself accredited when you get back.

And this is exactly what australia is doing. They too no longer recognises RIBA. And LAM too, for that matter.

next month i think. the accreditation manual is already ready to publish. that's the only delay i know of.

not exactly. on the short term it will hold them back. but not for that reason.

malaysia is one of the biggest exporter of students. it's the 3rd biggest exporter of students to the UK: 1st is india, 2nd is china (or was it the other way around?), and 3rd is us, a mere population of 28million people compared to the previous two. so if suddenly malaysian students cant go to the UK to study (because JPA and all other sponsorships will avoid sponsoring students to unrecognised schools), the UK architecture schools will suddenly be deprived of a well established income.

so in order for them to get students, they will need to acquire accreditation from LAM instead. it's a complete table reversal. let's say ONE school in the UK gets accredited. it doesnt matter if it's a cheap ass, lame noob school. but it will be the only school of architecture recognised by malaysia. so all malaysian students of architecture will flock there. with potentially GBP50k per student (inclusive everything), that's A LOT OF MONEY for one little school.

of course, this doesnt stop students who're self-sponsored to study there. they will be able to come back to msia and sit for the exam individually. so they wont be discriminated either. it's a win-win situation for all.

LAM will be recognised internationally.
well, i cant say i know the real motivation behind AACA's move. but from what i can see, RIBA's been acting like a world standard for so long, when they're actually not. AACA's move suddenly opened many eyes, and people now realise that RIBA is no more than a club and their accreditation is merely a comparative exercise without any real value when it comes to ARB.

similar to their move, LAM too decides that we've been favouring RIBA far too long for the wrong reasons. we've been discriminating students from non-RIBA schools, particularly japan, korea, china and even the US. they've been having a lot of issues when coming back here to practice that most of them just gave up and stay in that country for good.

now that's the real brain-drain problem right there.

so AACA now requires all overseas graduates (like from malaysian schools) to go through individual exams, exactly like what we're doing. the only thing is, i havent heard about them opening their accreditation process to overseas schools (like what we're trying to do).
the accreditation manual will be launched on 6 Jan 2014. i believe it will be downloadable from LAM website by then.

this one i dont know. first time i heard about it. let me check.

so far, UM is the latest to join UTM and UiTM to offer masters for part 2. i know UKM have the whole curriculum in hand, but i have no idea why they havent executed it yet. UPM, USM and UIAM all i heard is cakap2 with nothing concrete yet.

USIM is unlikely to start one soon because LAM will require them to sort the part 1 first (they havent produced their first graduates yet!). so it'll be a while.

that's all i know for now.
for revit, the latest i7 with 16GB RAM (or more) on a 64-bit OS is a must. on top of that, a strong graphics card (any that u can run the latest games) will do. it would be great if u can replace the HDD with SSD, coz this will boost the speed up to 40-50%, a very noticeable difference. expect to spend around RM4-5k for a laptop, or around RM3.5k on PC of a similar setup.

if we're talking about BIM, then yes, malaysia is definitely going the BIM way. it's a bit slower as we're doing it from the bottom up as compared to singapore, who adopted a top-down method. meaning their government forced everyone to adopt BIM, so the industry had to follow. here, a small group of people are pushing big companies to adopt BIM. it is slowly catching on, but the momentum is gaining.

in light of that, schools like UTM have been equipping their graduates with BIM capabilities (mainly authoring), which made them highly sought after as the big players prefer them rather than to retrain the existing staffs who usually are reluctant to adapt.

I'm curious because Autodesk describes BIM is an intelligent model-based process that provides insight to help architects plan, design, construct, and manage buildings and infrastructure.

Can you briefly explain what BIM really is?

Thanks. That gave me a rough idea what BIM is.
That's a very cool intelligent feature in the BIM software. With advanced BIM, engineers may become obsolete in the future.

well, it'll make profession more efficient, but unlikely to make it obsolete. it has been established that human mind become stagnant when it comes to mundane, regular and repetitive actions. this can be dangerous as engineers looking at the same thing over and over again might overlook certain important aspect. this task can now be given to software which regulate repetitive tasks.

however, software can only regulate based on written rules or scripts. it cannot act outside it. this is where human engineers come in. once the software highlights a problem, humans solve it. humans decide. humans take responsibility.

the one profession immediately affected by BIM is draughtmen. but the rest are still safe, assuming they too adopt BIM.

some of the principals i spoke to have begun retraining their draftmen to be technical assistants. at the moment, they see that BIM operators as technicians. not many see BIM as a tool for architects themselves, where they dont need to have it intermediated by a technician or assistant. usually they say "aaah aku dah tua laa". and they're like... my juniors.

dunno about myanmar, but at the moment, philippino schools are producing 100% BIM capable graduates. their industry is still far from BIM, more like malaysia, but the graduates are ready for it. so they've begun exporting their architecture graduates abroad, particularly to singapore.

very interesting discussion indeed..do BIM have something like library or database system where we can share the modelling information that being done by somebody else? just like sketchup with their 3Dwarehouse..

Is Autodesk Revit the most popular at the moment? I am thinking over to learn that in the near future.

so far in malaysia, it's the most dominant one. but revit is almost exclusive to PC users. there are many companies out there that are non-PC based.

but simply put, u learn one, it's not hard to learn the other.

Autodesk's strategy of giving free student license for 3 years is brilliant. Students will definitely use revit and cad in schools (original mah). So when they graduate and join firms who've yet to adopt BIM, they'll surely embrace autodesk's, as they have somebody who's familiar to it.

i believe for most architects today, sketchup is the way of life. we introduce them very early during education, usually around 2nd semester of 1st year or 1st semester of 2nd year.
yup. i've been saying this for many years now. at the moment there are government loan support for companies to buy original software, but not specific to revit or any BIM software.

for startups, can apply government grant. for free.

any accredited courses would be good enough. LAM have set a high standard that each school has to comply in order to acquire and retain the accreditation status. so UTAR and Taylor's are both accredited, but LKW only has one programme accredited (they have three), so be sure u apply to the correct one.

I've met so many Graduate Architects along my career who consistently failing their part 3 exam. This particular guy in his late 40s, religiously sitting the exam every year still no Ar. title.

The question is, who is LAM to guarantee one will eventually be an Ar. after he has done his studies? Putting all the skills & knowledge aside, every Ar. is representing the entire professional body as whole, every single one of them. They'll also look at the physical aspect, whether you're presentable, good communicator & etc. too.

On top that, both LAM & PAM are also responsible for the welfare of all registered members. How many active projects do we have in Malaysia & how much GA churning out by both IPTAs & IPTSs combined? What would happen if, not all of them but just 20% of them become Ar. annually? I've met so many Italian & Spanish architects working in local firm in recent years because architects is one of poorest professional in their country, the ratio of architects & general population is way too low.

Same goes to UK, during EU recession, my fellow ex colleague who went back to UK already told me. At worse period, he'd only get 2 interview invitation after 150 CVs sent! I don't think that'd brings any benefit even if you get your Ar. title in such circumstances...I'm in most part agree with what LAM is doing, to keep the pie sizable for all members.

Reality is, unless you plan to start your own firm. Being an Ar. hardly gives you any extra competitive edge until much later age of your time - promotion becoming sr. associate or president. A principle of famous 3 letters architecture practice once said, he don't need anyone that has signing power other than him & his partners. Yet, you'll still be able to run your own project, be a SO and most part of architect's scope if you can prove your capabilities. I'm didn't even complete my diploma before I join the industry but I have some of the significant high rise residential in my portfolio & currently in management level of a global design consultancy firm. Now I'm struggle to progress further, that's why I need to buckle up, get my Bsc Arch. & B.Arch done part-time, UTMSpace seems like the only option I can wish for...

i dont think you can compare it to getting a drivers licence, i mean if you have 10 years driving experience in malaysia, the test in uk wouldn't be too difficult for you since you've had 10 years of driving experience prior. of course there're different traffic rules and regulations, but the examiner isnt going to tell you to discard your 10 years of driving experience and drive like its your 1st time driving...

for LAM, we were told by the examiners that our working experience will not be taken into considerations and we are solely evaluated based on our academic portfolios. Now isn't it a bit ridiculous to have a 10-year experienced architect (foreign experience but still experience in design and construction nonetheless) be told that he/she failed the part 2 exam because of what he/she studied in uni 10 years ago didn't meet LAM's requirement?

i agree that if the architect has to go through the part 3 exam, and the whole logbook thing before that to familiarize himself with the local UBBL and relevant acts. but to have to present the whole academic portfolio again... its like going for a work interview and get told that you're not qualified because the employer isnt satisfied with your UPSR result, and you have to sit for UPSR again to prove your credibility. i hope i'm making sense here..

I understand that architect is a regulated profession. not sure if LAM has (if they dont, they should) a system to evaluate a person based on their experience much like the National Program of Assessment (NPrA) in Australia where they assess an individual based on their experience and skills instead of previous academic qualifications, and if they pass the assessment they are eligible to sit for the exam to become a licensed architect.

well first of all, u HAVE to go out and work for at least 6 months before continuing ur part 2. this is the new ruling by LAM, unless u dont plan to have a part 2. it's true, some firms would try their best to not let u go, but then again, they're bound to labour laws, where u do have legal rights. sure, some people might b**** about that their office loves them too much laa whatever laa. but really? if u wanna go, just go laa. it's not like the firm can blacklist u or anything.

good workers are uncommon in architecture profession. if they really like u, they'll wait. if they really, really like u, then the firm may sponsor ur studies a bit (under contract of course). this has happened to a number of my students. it's like, going to study, fully sponsored, and have a job waiting for u when u graduate!

the fact is, there is a shortage of part 1 positions out there, simply because people are going to study straight away. they'll say many things to not let u climb up to their level .

at the moment, the only thing that is sure is ALL overseas schools will cease from becoming accredited beyond 2017. if u want an accredited degree, u need to be enrolled by 2017. even if u managed to do so for part 1, it would mean ur part 2 wont be (as u will enroll at least 2020 or beyond).

reaccreditation now depends on them. most wouldnt care about accreditation from such a small country. but malaysia is the second biggest supplier of international students to the UK (read this figure), 2nd only to china. this is a big deal, since malaysia is a population of only 28mil and from non-EU to boot. even india fell behind.

it means our students are a source of income. if their schools are not accredited, students will be reluctant to go there. in fact, JPA and any sponsors that use JPA's standards will only sponsor students according to LAM's list now. this is a strong motivation for the UK schools to get themselves accredited by us. of course, this process will take some time. if u could land a place by 2017, hopefully there will be a variety of schools already accredited by 2020 for ur part 2.