CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
Building maintenance is a
major activity in most countries. Any reduction in resources applied to
building maintenance will have a visible effect on the economy.
Few years ago, a rapid
growth of housing construction clearly appears as a part of the country development.
The number of modern houses increases and more houses are being constructed. As
a result, more maintenance work is required in order to cope with this type of
construction.
Due to the growth of
housing with the lack of building Standards, more maintenance, rehabilitation,
and renovation work have become necessary to ensure the serviceability and safety
of the constructed houses. In addition, the existing houses need to be
sustained as long as possible. Therefore, ways must be found to reduce the
maintenance cost works due to ageing of the buildings while keeping the same
quality.
Building maintenance is
seriously neglected area of research and study. Few schools of architecture or
building include it in their curriculum and only recently has work commenced on
the research and development in this subject.
Few building owners regard
planned maintenance as a matter for serious concern, and yet cannot afford to
allow buildings, old or new, to decay through neglect. As it is clearly
impractical and even undesirable to replace building, whether as owners,
designers, constructors, or users should take a serious interest in this vast
problem of building maintenance.
1.2 BUILDING
MAINTENANCE OVERVIEW
Maintenance assists
retaining economic life of buildings. Moreover, it is a productive activity
both at the private and the national levels. At the private level, proper
maintenance leads to lower depreciation costs (due to longer economic life) and
consequently leads to higher profitability. While at the national level, proper
maintenance leads to lower expenditures on replacement. Thus, allowing more
expenditure on expansion into new productive investment (Ikhwan, 1996).
The Committee on Building
Maintenance in British defined maintenance as: “Building Maintenance is the work
undertaken in order to keep, restore or improve every facility, i.e. every part
of a building, its services and surrounds to a currently acceptable standard,
and to sustain the utility and value of the building”(Mills, 1980).
In addition, maintenance
is defined in the British Standards (BS 3811:1974) as “A combination of any
action carried out to retain an item in, or restore it to an acceptable
condition” (Mills, 1980).
A more functional
definition is that “Maintenance is synonymous with controlling the condition of
a building so that its pattern lies within specified regions”. (Shear, 1983)
Moreover, building
maintenance cost can be defined as the cost of any actions carried out to
retain an item in, or restore it to an acceptable condition but excluding any
improvements other than those necessitated by inability to replace obsolete
materials or components (Seeley, 1976).
The objectives of building
maintenance are therefore (Alner and Fellows, 1990):
·
To ensure that buildings and their associated services are in
a safe condition.
·
To ensure that the buildings are fit for use.
·
To ensure that the condition of the building meets all
statutory requirements.
·
To carry out the maintenance work necessary to maintain the
value of the physical assets of the building stock.
·
To carry out the work necessary to maintain the quality of
the building.
Maintenance can be done in
different stages. Each stage will have different characteristics. Liska defined
those stages as follows:
·
Planning and Design Stage: the planning and designing of the
facility should be based on the identified function and be as maintenance free
as possible. In this stage a lot of money can be saved with the proper plan and
design. For this reason, the building manager and maintenance personnel should
be consulted during the early stages of the building design.
·
Construction Stage: in order to achieve minimum level
of maintenance during the building life, work performed during the construction
phase must be done with the highest quality in term of workmanship. As a
result, expert contractor should be selected to perform the project.
·
Maintenance Stage: in this stage, maintenance is
performed after the building has been constructed and occupied.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF
THE RESEARCH
The main objectives of
this research are as follows:
·
To study and analyze the concept of building maintenance.
·
To study the main factors affecting the building maintenance
cost.
·
To study some ways that help in managing building
maintenance.
1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research commenced by reviewing and
analyzing the relevant literature. Then, it gives an overview of the building
maintenance cost concepts. Also, the factors affecting the building maintenance
cost are explained. In addition, some maintenance management approaches that
aim to reduce the maintenance costs of existing building are highlighted.
1.5 LITERATURE
REVIEW
The British Former
Minister of
and Works
recognized the importance of research in various aspects of building maintenance
when he established the committee on building maintenance in 1965. In the three
decades after World War II, research in the field was mainly directed at
properties of materials and few of the results were actually implemented.
Therefore, the relationship between design, maintenance, execution of
maintenance, economic significance of maintenance, and the actual performance
of the materials and components under varying condition should be considered
(Al-Shiha, 1993).
In the early nineties,
Neely developed data bases of takes that cover all maintenance work required
over the building. The data bases include the entire component that could be
found in buildings constructed by private industry and government agencies. The
results of Neely identification include:
·
All tasks that had to be performed to maintain the components
in the standard operating order.
·
All possible components that could exist in any building.
·
Task resource information was developed for each task to
record labor and materials resources.
·
The labor hours required to perform each task was determined
by dividing the task into sub task.
In the early nineties,
researcher notes the heavy need to conduct such types of studies. Moreover,
many researchers did specific studies related to their countries.
In 1993, Al-Shiha
conducted a research discussing the effect of faulty design and construction
factors on building maintenance. As a result, the most severe factors which
affect the maintenance works and causes the high maintenance cost are determined
as: inadequate structural design such as foundation, hiring unqualified
designers, not complying with specification, not relating exterior materials
selection to climate conditions, inadequate waterproofing and drainage,
unqualified workplace, inability to read the dawning’s.
The criteria affecting the
priority rating of public building maintenance works were studied by Al-Majed
in the late nineties. Twenty three criteria were identified (i.e. Function of
the building, location, initial cost… etc.). These criteria were classified
into two major groups as follows:
·
Building performance group: Twelve criteria which emphasis on
the building.
·
Managerial group: Eleven criteria which deal with
decision-making process and behavior of decision maker.
Iqhwan in the early
nineties proposed some concrete measures that can lead to the improvement of
maintenance status in Saudi
Arabia along the following dimension:
·
Developing and enforcing sound of maintenance practices.
·
Supporting researches in maintenance management systems
appropriate to Saudi Arabia.
These measures are
·
Study and assessment of maintenance status along with the two
dimensions.
·
Development of adequate maintenance management information
education program.
In conclusion, many
researchers highlighted the importance of maintenance.