BUILDING MAINTENANCE: A PATH TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY

• Main Authors: Khamidi, M. Faris, Olanrewaju, Abdul Lateef, Idrus, Arazi
• Format: Citation Index Journal
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: TH Building construction; TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General)
• Online Access: http://eprints.utp.edu.my/5113/1/building_maintanance.pdf; http://eprints.utp.edu.my/5113/

This paper explores the potential of building maintenance as one of many ways to advocate sustainability in the built environment in particular during the building operation. The first objective is to provide an overview of the sustainability issues and building maintenance through literature and theory reviews. The second objective is to analyse building defects in the Malaysian university campuses. And this is achieved through questionnaire survey. The questionnaires were administered on 50 university maintenance organizations. With a 66% response rate, the findings suggest that some defects require maintenance urgently than the others and on the basis of which it is concluded that resources should be directed to the more urgent ones while the less urgent ones could be included in the subsequent maintenance rolling programme (i.e. planned maintenance). The research found that lift failure, faulty electrical systems and roof damages were the defects that respondents considered extremely urgent to maintain. Defect analysis is significant for universities to be seen as a role-model in advocating sustainable maintenance management system for their buildings and engineering services. Keywords: Defects, University Buildings, Maintenance Management, Sustainable Building