Strategic Maintenance System in Buildings - Research Paper Example

STRATEGIC MAINTENANCE SYSTEM IN BUILDINGS Student’s Name Class Instructor Institution of Affiliation City Date Abstract This literature review paper aims at focusing on strategic maintenance system in buildings. The major investigations to be carried out involve the review of relevant literature concerning maintenance, maintenance strategies, maintenance policies, maintenance management, and maintenance operation process and maintenance systems in buildings. The importance including benefits of maintenance are also discussed. The literature review also identifies the existing research gaps and research questions which provide the objectives of the overall research. Introduction Maintenance can be explained as the work or a series of activities undertaken for the purposes of restoring a building or a facility to a standard that is acceptable. Seeley, I (1987, 15) defined maintenance as a series of activities taken for the sole purpose of keeping, restoring and improving every section of a building, its surroundings and services, to a standard that is currently acceptable and for the purposes of sustaining a buildings utility value. The British Standard (BSI, 1991, 43) defines maintenance as an association of the administration and technical actions with the aim of restoring or retaining an item to a state that enables it to carry out the required function. The definition of the word maintenance keeps on changing exclusively from technical responsibility to the benefits of balancing the management and technical responsibility as time continues to elapse. In order to be able to maintain buildings successfully and extend the lifecycles of buildings and their fittings services, there is need for the development of maintenance strategies. The main maintenance strategies involve; condition, corrective and preventive-based maintenance. According to Chan et al (2001, 494), breakdown-based, integration-based, time-based, renovation-based and performance-based strategies were developed from these maintenance strategies. When choosing or developing a maintenance strategy, there are different approaches employed. Among the existing strategies for building maintenance, PPM (planned preventive maintenance) is usually challenged by top management. Background and Theory In the 19th century, building maintenance was regarded a needed evil. There existed no option for keeping away from failure and the common state was that it costs what it costs. Upon the end of the 2nd word war followed by advances in technology, maintenance came to be viewed as a function for support. The period of 1950 to 1980 experienced the arrival of techniques such as condition monitoring and preventive maintenance where individuals perceived that maintenance could be planned and controlled. In the 21st century, maintenance came to be regarded as an inherent business process component where it was perceived as a process for creating additional value. Table 1.0 Maintenance perception Paradigm Shift Early 1900’s 1950-2000 Present scenario It costs what it costs can be planned and controlled It creates additional value Necessary evil Important support function integral part of business process Wood, B (1999, 189) proposed a just-in-time theory that applies to building maintenance and created from production industry. From a strategic view, there exists little understanding of the relationships between the core objectives of a business with PPM (Loosemore, M. and Hsin, Y. 2001, 464). Contrarily, it is advisable to use PPM for the purposes of optimizing the allocated maintenance resources (Shen, Q. and Lo, K. 1999, 27). From a technological view, most of the works focuses on the application of technology to performance-based and condition-based maintenance with predictive, reliability and forward maintenance where they are all founded on condition surveys (Lam, K. 2000, 3). According to Zawawi et al. (2010, 349) buildings’ poor maintenance is caused by several factors such as inadequate comprehension of user satisfaction, inappropriate quality standards, setting up and policies, insufficient resources in terms of maintenance staff and inefficient strategic maintenance systems employed for the purposes of maintenance delivery. According to suggestions made by Olanrewaju, A. Khamidi, M. and Idrus, A (2011, 159), it is crucial to develop a building maintenance performance model for the purposes of increasing the existing facilities utility value. According to a research done by Lee, H. and Scott, D (2008, 37), maintenance policy is a crucial tool in building maintenance since it helps the maintenance personnel in planning the fitting maintenance strategies. Maintenance policies for buildings are based on three crucial elements namely: allocation of resources for maintenance purposes, maintenance strategy selection and definition of maintenance standard. According to Alner, G. and Fellows, R (1990, 90), safety is the main concern in maintenance strategy planning to guarantee that buildings and their adjoining services are in condition that is safe, complying with all statutory and law requirements and suitable for use. Since as stated earlier, the work of maintenance is undertaken for the purposes of maintaining the building quality and value, in policy development, quality and value factors are used. However, Burns, P (1997, 27) debates that aside from the consideration of a buildings value, it is necessary to have some ground rules for allocating resources for maintenance purposes that are obtainable by the management. Maintenance policies are important to organizations and organizations should therefore identify with the costs included for obtaining funding for maintenance purposes. Thus, strategies for maintenance should be one of the main business decisions to be made on the agenda for management. The fundamental factors that influence the costs of maintenance according to a research conducted by De Marco, A., Ruffa, S. and Mangano, G (2010, 104) involve the design decisions usually made at the strategic level. In order to reduce the costs of maintenance, suitable design decisions must be made at this strategic level. In reference to research done by Lee, H and Scott, D (2008, 39), facility management, strategy and maintenance policy for buildings, performance management and strategic management are the operational and strategic factors that influence the management of operation and process of building maintenance. Managing the operation process of building maintenance is the goal to providing users and building customers with an improved built environment. That said, in the case of the agenda for management, maintenance is mostly not a priority. This impediment brings about gaps between the strategic levels top management and the operational levels maintenance personnel. As a matter of fact, maintenance of buildings is in a transformation pace with facilities management development that influences the plans to implement building performance and the operation process for building maintenance. Before performing an in-depth study on how to improve the above mentioned gap for efficiency in building operation, it is essential to have an understanding on operational and strategic factors. Therefore, the objective of building maintenance must be included in the sub-business organizational objectives. Maintenance objectives planning have influences in terms of employing distinct maintenance strategies that are impacted by the process, cost and quality indirectly and directly on management operation of facilities. According to Lai, J (2010, 415), the significance of fulfilling the needs of facilities management is often identified but the practitioner’s motivations towards preparing a budget that is comprehensive are inadequate. Lai arrived at this conclusion after studying the issues of building maintenance and operation budget allocation in Hong Kong commercial buildings. Ali et al. (2010, 285), identified the factors that affect the costs of housing maintenance through conducting a survey on maintenance management staff, managers of buildings and supervisors in Malaysia. Therefore, Ali et al. (2010, 290) arrived at a conclusion that it is advisable to gather the different views of practitioners before determining the strategy for building maintenance and then accessing the concepts that are viable. Literature Analysis A maintenance strategy can be explained as a plan that is long term and covers all the maintenance management aspects that sets the maintenance direction. A maintenance strategy’s purpose is to report the procedures and systems that will be employed in managing and planning work. The maintenance strategy also explains in detail the kind of maintenance to be undertaken. According to Seeley, I (1987, 23) maintenance can be classified into two categories namely: unplanned and planned maintenance. Planned maintenance is further categorized into corrective and preventive maintenance. PPM (Planned Preventive Maintenance) are activities that are steered towards facility failure prevention, undertaken during a facilities life cycle to guarantee its prolonged operation. PPM activities are arranged and undertaken with the use if records, forethought and control to a plan that was predetermined. PPM can be classified into: Schedule maintenance where preventive maintenance is undertaken at intervals that are predetermined; preventive running maintenance where the maintenance is undertaken during the servicing of a facility and condition based maintenance where preventive maintenance is started arising from the knowledge of a buildings condition. Planned corrective maintenance can be explained as the job carried out for the purposes of restoring a facility to function or to a standard that is acceptable. This kind of maintenance is carried out upon the occurrence of a failure and is meant to return or restore a facility to a previous state where it can carry out its designed function. Unplanned maintenance can be defined as work that results from undiscovered damage or breakdown caused by external causes. This type of maintenance is based on a waiting policy where it waits for a user to lodge a complaint for a maintenance action to be carried out. Maintenance work as stated by Seeley in his work can be classified as avoidable and predictable. In this case, avoidable maintenance can be defined as the work needed to amend failures brought about by employing faulty materials, incorrect design and bad installation. Predictable maintenance can be explained as any regular periodic work needed to keep a products performance traits together with what can be needed to repair the product upon achieving its useful lifespan. A maintenance system effectiveness and efficiency plays a major part in ensuring the success and survival of an organization. When maintenance systems are employed in building maintenance, they impact maintenance performance adversely. When conducting maintenance in reactive mode, the maintenance cost compared to the cost of preventive mode maintenance is usually on average approximately three times higher accompanied with less performance. This can be explained by the fact that reactive maintenance does not address a problems root cause and always leads to repetitive failure since it turns a blind eye on preventive maintenance and opts to address a problem when it is reported. A lot of organizations usually chose to adopt proactive maintenance philosophies due to the fact that proactive maintenance approaches are dedicated to improving maintenance management in the long term. The factor of operational involvement is capable of bringing about efficient maintenance management since the primary cause of maintenance failure is the absence of primary care from maintenance personnel and abuse of maintenance operations. The process of maintenance starts with an organizations maintenance strategies and objectives obtained from corporate objectives, goals and vision that are based on the expectations of shareholders. It is usually important to develop a maintenance program based on the organization, maintenance objectives, capabilities, resources and maintenance policy. The developed program is then subdivided into separate maintenance tasks. The maintenance tasks execution is carried out in accordance with the maintenance plans specified locations and times. The management should understand the significance of maintenance and pair the maintenance plan with the organizations objectives, goals and vision. The managing function of the process of maintenance is referred to as maintenance management. Maintenance management can be defined as a methodical approach to evaluating, planning, monitoring and organizing maintenance activities and the costs involved. It can also be defined as maintenance organization with a strategy that is concurred. Any effective system for maintenance management combined with able, knowledgeable and efficient staff can stop safety and health issues and the damage of the environment; give an asset a longer life accompanied by few breakdowns and lead to a high quality of life and reduced operating costs. Maintenance management provides the management with a framework that they can use in tracking work performance, preparing reports for the purposes of comparing actual and planned performance and developing maintenance plans. Importance of Maintenance Maintenance offers crucial support for capital intensive and heavy industry through the process of maintaining facilities in an operating condition that is safe for both the environment and humans. Currently, maintenance is globally viewed as the main function in terms of maintaining an organizations profitability in the long-term (Zavadskas, E. Bejder, E. and Kaklauskas, A. 1998, 334). Maintenance acts as a crucial support function in organizations that have made large investments in physical assets where it contributes in the achievement of the organizations goals. Inadequate maintenance, on the other hand creates unfavorable effects on the economy of a nation. A poor maintained asset does not support productivity. A nation’s commerce will not thrive in an environment that is poor. For example, if a hospital building is maintained poorly, it will have a negative effect on the staff, patients and the overall health of a nation. Benefits derived from maintenance can be classified into economic, social and environmental benefits. Economically, maintenance is of importance because it ensures that a nations factors of production, in this case buildings, is effectively utilized as possible and the size of expenditure included. The preservation of buildings stocks utility and value is thus necessary to a country’s economic well-being. Socially, the built environment is widely accepted in that it expresses the complicated economic and social factors that provide life and structure to a community in a physical form. The buildings quality and condition mirrors the public’s confidence and pride. Usually, the presence of unhealthy and ruined buildings in an environment that is decaying brings about antisocial behaviors and a depressed quality of life. Environmentally the benefits of maintenance include: emission reduction, energy efficiency, water usage reduction and waste reduction. Since maintenance increases the life of an existing building, it therefore lowers pollution and energy, material, and transport consumption that could have been incurred in construction of a new building (Bullen, P. 2007, 20). Upgrading existing buildings sustainably offers the occupants of the buildings considerable advantages. The inclination of using natural renewable materials for maintenance purposes helps in minimizing the energy required and reducing the associated carbon footprint. The main purpose of maintenance is to maintain buildings in a condition that is operational. It prevents buildings from decaying, therefore, from becoming a factors of production liability and from becoming a discomfort to users. Buildings that are maintained properly maintain their physical structure and capital value that buildings that are neglected. At a reasonable cost every year, maintaining buildings regularly prevents the occurrence of major and costly renovations or repairs that can be done after the occurrence of failure. Research gaps and questions Maintenance of buildings is an area of great importance that have been given and allured a lot of research attention in construction of buildings. The state of art used in building facilities sustainability maintenance is also another major topic that have been researched on and studied in a lot of countries (Fu, C. Kaya, S. and Aouad, M. 2007, 85). However, in Australia, these two topics have barely been researched. As a matter of fact, over the past decades, the increased economic growth has facilitated notable increase in the number and value of Australian commercial buildings (McLean, I. 2012, 14). Nevertheless, little effort has been made in the studying of sustainable renovation and maintenance strategies for this development (Kofoworola, O. and Gheewala, S. 2008, 498). Research Questions The research on strategic maintenance systems in buildings aims at addressing the following research questions: 1) Do buildings in Australia have strategic maintenance systems in place? And if so, what are the systems inadequacies? 2) What challenges are likely to be faced in the implementation of a strategic maintenance system? 3) In the process of maintenance, what are the factors that have brought about the present maintenance conditions of buildings in Australia? 4) Does the maintenance system’s effectiveness affect the building facilities maintenance condition? 5) How can strategic maintenance systems in buildings be implemented and how can the maintenance systems effectiveness in Australian buildings be improved? 6) What are the advantages of strategic maintenance systems in buildings? 7) What are the existing theories on building maintenance and how do they contribute to the research work? Research Objectives/Hypotheses Arising from the research questions stated above, this research aims to achieve the following objectives: 1) Reviewing and studying the costs and advantages of upgrading existing buildings sustainably before formulating a strategy for building maintenance. 2) Raising building standards, providing energy-efficient and sustainable buildings, maximizing money value, giving design solutions that are innovative, managing existing buildings effectively and efficiently and increasing the usage of buildings. 3) Reviewing the various existing theories based on the significance of building maintenance strategies, effects of sustainable renovation and gathering data from practitioners and shareholders in the building industry. 4) Employing intelligent automatic maintenance scheduler and equipment’s to improve maintenance efficiency and quality. 5) Formulating a strategic maintenance system in buildings. 6) Formulating maintenance policies through choosing a maintenance strategy, allocating resources for maintenance and defining the maintenance standards. 7) Examining the maintenance systems used in Australian buildings and highlighting their implementation deficiencies and inadequacies. 8) Recommending measures of improving the maintenance systems in Australia. 9) Establishing the influences of the deficiencies in the maintenance system on the buildings maintenance condition. References Ali, A.S., Kamaruzzaman, S.N., Sulaiman, R. and Cheong Peng, Y., 2010. Factors affecting housing maintenance cost in Malaysia. Journal of Facilities Management, 8(4), pp.285-298. Alner, G.R. and Fellows, R.F., 1990. Maintenance of local authority school building in UK: a case study. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Property Maintenance Management and Modernisation (pp. 90-9). Singapore. BSI . ( 1991 ) British Standard BS 3811: 1964 – Glossary of Maintenance Management Terms in Terotechnology. British Standards Publishing Ltd . Bullen, P.A., 2007. Adaptive reuse and sustainability of commercial buildings. Facilities, 25(1/2), pp.20-31. Burns , P ., 1997 Advanced integrated maintenance strategies . January/February 1997 Issues of AFE Facilities Management Journal, pp. 27 – 36 . Chan, K.T., Lee, R.H.K. and Burnett, J., 2001. Maintenance performance: a case study of hospitality engineering systems. Facilities, 19(13/14), pp.494-504. De Marco, A., Ruffa, S. and Mangano, G., 2010. Strategic factors affecting warehouse maintenance costs. Journal of Facilities Management, 8(2), pp.104-113. Fu, C, Kaya, S and Aouad, MKG 2007, 'The development of an IFC-based lifecycle costing prototype tool for building construction and maintenance: integrating lifecycle costing to nD modelling', Construction Innovation: Information, Process, Management, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 85-98 Kofoworola, O.F. and Gheewala, S.H., 2008. Environmental life cycle assessment of a commercial office building in Thailand. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 13(6), pp.498-511. Lai, J.H.K., 2010. Operation and maintenance budgeting for commercial buildings in Hong Kong. Construction Management and Economics, 28(4), pp.415-427. Lam, K.C., 2000. Planning and execution of business-centred maintenance for perfect buildings in year 2000. Lee, H.Y.H. and Scott, D., 2008. Identification of main aspects in the management of building maintenance operation processes. Surveyors Times’, Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors, 17(6), pp.37-41. . Loosemore, M. and Hsin, Y.Y., 2001. Customer-focused benchmarking for facilities management. Facilities, 19(13/14), pp.464-476. McLean, I.W., 2012. Why Australia prospered: the shifting sources of economic growth. Princeton University Press. Olanrewaju, A.A., Khamidi, M.F. and Idrus, A., 2011. Validation of building maintenance performance model for Malaysian universities. International Journal of Human and Social Sciences, 6(3), pp.159-163. Seeley, I.H., 1987. Building maintenance. Macmillan Education. Shen, Q.P. and Lo, K.K., 1999. Optimisation of Resources in Building Maintenance-An Analytical Approach. The Journal of Building Surveying, 1(1), pp.27-32 Wood, B. ( 1999 ) Intelligent building care . Facilities 17 (5/6) : 189 – 194 Zavadskas, E., Kaklauskas, A. and Bejder, E., 1998. Raising the efficiency of the building lifetime with special emphasis on maintenance. Facilities, 16(11), pp.334-340. Zawawi, E.M.A., Kamaruzzaman, S.N., Ali, A.S. and Sulaiman, R., 2010. Assessment of building maintenance management in Malaysia: Resolving using a solution diagram. Journal of Retail & Leisure Property, 9(4), pp.349-356. Read More

In the 21st century, maintenance came to be regarded as an inherent business process component where it was perceived as a process for creating additional value. Table 1.0 Maintenance perception Paradigm Shift Early 1900’s 1950-2000 Present scenario It costs what it costs can be planned and controlled It creates additional value Necessary evil Important support function integral part of business process Wood, B (1999, 189) proposed a just-in-time theory that applies to building maintenance and created from production industry.

From a strategic view, there exists little understanding of the relationships between the core objectives of a business with PPM (Loosemore, M. and Hsin, Y. 2001, 464). Contrarily, it is advisable to use PPM for the purposes of optimizing the allocated maintenance resources (Shen, Q. and Lo, K. 1999, 27). From a technological view, most of the works focuses on the application of technology to performance-based and condition-based maintenance with predictive, reliability and forward maintenance where they are all founded on condition surveys (Lam, K. 2000, 3). According to Zawawi et al.

(2010, 349) buildings’ poor maintenance is caused by several factors such as inadequate comprehension of user satisfaction, inappropriate quality standards, setting up and policies, insufficient resources in terms of maintenance staff and inefficient strategic maintenance systems employed for the purposes of maintenance delivery. According to suggestions made by Olanrewaju, A. Khamidi, M. and Idrus, A (2011, 159), it is crucial to develop a building maintenance performance model for the purposes of increasing the existing facilities utility value.

According to a research done by Lee, H. and Scott, D (2008, 37), maintenance policy is a crucial tool in building maintenance since it helps the maintenance personnel in planning the fitting maintenance strategies. Maintenance policies for buildings are based on three crucial elements namely: allocation of resources for maintenance purposes, maintenance strategy selection and definition of maintenance standard. According to Alner, G. and Fellows, R (1990, 90), safety is the main concern in maintenance strategy planning to guarantee that buildings and their adjoining services are in condition that is safe, complying with all statutory and law requirements and suitable for use.

Since as stated earlier, the work of maintenance is undertaken for the purposes of maintaining the building quality and value, in policy development, quality and value factors are used. However, Burns, P (1997, 27) debates that aside from the consideration of a buildings value, it is necessary to have some ground rules for allocating resources for maintenance purposes that are obtainable by the management. Maintenance policies are important to organizations and organizations should therefore identify with the costs included for obtaining funding for maintenance purposes.

Thus, strategies for maintenance should be one of the main business decisions to be made on the agenda for management. The fundamental factors that influence the costs of maintenance according to a research conducted by De Marco, A., Ruffa, S. and Mangano, G (2010, 104) involve the design decisions usually made at the strategic level. In order to reduce the costs of maintenance, suitable design decisions must be made at this strategic level. In reference to research done by Lee, H and Scott, D (2008, 39), facility management, strategy and maintenance policy for buildings, performance management and strategic management are the operational and strategic factors that influence the management of operation and process of building maintenance.

Managing the operation process of building maintenance is the goal to providing users and building customers with an improved built environment. That said, in the case of the agenda for management, maintenance is mostly not a priority.

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