The identification of design for maintainability imperatives to achieve cost effective building maintenance: A delphi study

Abstract

Incorporating maintainability during the building design is essential to increase overall performance of the building including quality and cost as; the management and operation process of facilities can have a significant impact on cost, health and safety, energy and quality. As a result, a more effective and efficient building facility will be turned over during the post occupancy stage. Literature review reveals that there is a need to implement maintainability during the building design phase; mainly due to the increasing life-cycle cost of the building facilities. A critical review of the literature has been carried out to explore the consideration of maintainability during the building design and subsequently identifies a set of criteria and indicators to be applied during the building design phase to achieve cost effective building maintenance. Thus, this paper opted a four-round Delphi questionnaire survey to identify the relevant design for maintainability criteria and indicators to achieve cost effective building maintenance. 8 designs for maintainability criteria along with the indicators for each of the criterion have been identified. These design for maintainability indicators help the building architects to incorporate maintainability practice during the building design phase and thus help to achieve cost effective maintenance. This paper aims to address the long pending quest of incorporating maintainability during the building design phase and consequently achieve cost effective building maintenance.