This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on July 17, 2023 - July 23, 2023

Oval Damansara is a unique building, thanks to its oval-shaped structure and façade, which is fully decked out in aqua-coloured glass cladding.

“The glass is quite a challenge to clean and it does cost a lot; so, we usually clean it once every two years. But it’s an added advantage to the building, as it provides a good amount of natural lighting into the offices,” its building manager Yeap Soon Hong tells City & Country.

Yeap was assigned as the building manager by the Management Corporation (MC) and takes instruction from the appointed property management company, Henry Butcher Malaysia (Mont Kiara) Sdn Bhd (HBMK). 

Completed in 2012, the 33-storey building has a six-floor podium block and a 27-floor office tower. Oval Damansara boasts 311 offices and retail lots that have built-ups ranging from 249 to 6,202 sq ft. There is an additional basement floor with 763 car park bays.

Situated along Sprint Highway in Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI), Oval Damansara is near SS2 and Damansara Utama and easily accessible from other parts of Selangor as well as Kuala Lumpur.

The current occupancy rate of the building is about 90%, with 89% occupied by locally owned companies and the remaining space by internationally owned companies. HBMK was appointed property manager of Oval Damansara in 2020. The assigned onsite team is led by HBMK operations director (commercial properties) Lee Choon Hoe.

Oval Damansara is the Silver winner in the 10 Years and Above — Multiple-owned Strata Office category in The Edge Malaysia Best Managed & Susutainble Property Awards 2023.

“When the developer handed the building over to the owners, it had a property management company appointed by the developer. Owing to poor service, the joint management body decided to take a bold step to manage the building themselves by employing their own building management staff,” says Yeap.

“The word ‘maintenance’ does not really cover the work that the building has undergone. When the building was handed over by the developer, the car park required upgrading, and the back route to the loading bay was only grass. The committee worked to modify and repair whatever that was necessary.

“When the building began to age, which caused management issues to become more complex, we decided to appoint a professional property management firm,” says Yeap, adding that that is how HBMK came into the picture on March 15, 2020, just three days before the pandemic lockdown.

Account manager Low Sook Ling says that, after HBMK officially took over Oval Damansara’s management in August 2020, it discovered that the building did not have a property management system. “The system was unable to generate receipts for multiple transactions and there were no receipt numbers for some of the receipts generated. We also found that there were RM125,000 in unidentified banked-in funds in the account, so we had to check each one.

“Also, the bank reconciliation [statements] were not up-to-date, by one or two years. So, they had to engage a third-party accountant to do it on a yearly basis. Basically, we had to reconcile all of their past accounts,” Low says.

HBMK then used a new and improved accounting software tailored for strata property management, she adds.

At Oval Damansara, planned preventive maintenance is regularly carried out on both the services provided and the mechanical and engineering (M&E) systems in the building.

Lee says there are two checklists for internal maintenance: one for plumbing and the other for electricity. Checklists are also supplied to service providers for the three main categories — lifts, chargemen and the firefighting system.

In addition, in-house technicians monitor service providers when they carry out routine maintenance and servicing tasks. Lee says, “If the service provider’s performance is deemed to be subpar, management will get in touch with them and discuss how to proceed in order to enhance their performance.”

He says the team had to replace the fire extinguishers, as it had already been 10 years.

“We’re also working on repainting to give the interiors a new look. We are in the midst of getting approval for cleaning the façade, which involves all the glass cladding.”

Other long-term maintenance plans include waterproofing parts of the building from the water sprinklers, polishing the marble and granite flooring, upgrading the landscape and resurfacing the road at the entrance of the building.

The building has 20 lifts, which is a plus and minus, says Yeap. “We have two types of lifts: low-rise ones, which serve the podium levels; and high-rise ones, which serve the office tower. We do have long-term plans to maintain them, as we have a yearly contract with KONE, an elevator company from Finland. They have been maintaining our lifts ever since the building was completed; we’ve never had any major issues so far.”

To solve the lack of parking space in the building, the management came up with a free shuttle service called the OtterBus. According to Yeap, the OtterBus, which operates from 8am to 7pm, has five pick-up points and stops: Oval Damansara; TTDI MRT station; 3 Damansara shopping centre; Glo Damansara Mall; and Wisma TA in Damansara Kim.

The maintenance fee at Oval Damansara is RM3.45 per share unit. According to Yeap, as at November 2022, the collection rate was 95%,and a month later, it was 89%.The average collection rate was 98% for the whole year.

He says: “Of the total due, 90% were below three months, 8% were between three and six months, and 2% were below six months.  The collection was kept at a very healthy level.”

There has also been no maintenance fee increment since 2014, Yeap says. “We were able to keep the maintenance fee at the same level because of three main factors; prudent financial management in terms of spending and earning; constant attention to maintenance so that there was no major damage; and having committees and tenants that have a high sense of responsibility in terms of using the facilities with care,” Yeap says, adding that he expects the maintenance fee to remain the same for the next couple of years.

Low concurs, saying; “In the past years, we always had a surplus but, recently, the increases in minimum wage and electricity tariffs have slowly eaten up our accumulated funds. From our analysis, our current surplus can last for up to 10 years at most.

“The budget, as compared with the actual spend for Oval Damansara, was kept at a minimal variance, whereby the extra income was coming from fixed deposit interest, sale of access cards, visitor parking and lobby rental.”

Overall expenditure variance, Low says, was underspent by 9%, contractual operating expenditure was overspent by 2%, non-contractual operating expenditure was overspent by 41%, utility charges were underspent by 3% and administrative expenditure was underspent by 13%.

As part of its cost and energy-saving features, some of the facilities’ conventional induction lights have been upgraded to LED lights.

“The lights have been gradually changed since 2016. This was an initiative started by the previous management. The change led to a reduction in electricity costs in the long run. Costs saved are about RM 10,000 per year. There is also a reduction in the cost of ballasts and bulbs at roughly RM2,000 per year,” Lee says.

In addition, all air-conditioning and lighting in Oval Damansara are on a set timer system and centralised. The management team is looking to equip the building with solar panels in the near future, which Low estimates would cost RM200,000 to RM300,000.

In terms of psf value, Oval Damansara witnessed a downward trend, which Yeap says was caused by the after-effects of the pandemic.

“It’s no surprise that the office building sector, or non-Grade-A office buildings, are not doing very well at the moment. In 2019, the average psf value of a unit with built-ups from 1,500 to 1,600 sq ft at Oval Damansara was RM600 psf. In 4Q2022, the average price for the same sizes dropped to RM443 psf,” he adds.

There are signs of recovery, however, as yields and rental rates are returning to pre-pandemic levels, says Yeap. “From the lowest rental yield of 4.6% in 2Q2022, Oval Damansara had a yield of about 5.6% in 1Q2023. For a 1,560 sq ft unit, the average rental rate was RM4,000 per month. Now, we’re seeing the trend moving towards pre-pandemic rates.”

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's App Store and Android's Google Play.