Building assessment for repair and maintenance by DEMATEL approach

Abstract

The repair and maintenance activities are one of the basic concepts in buildings. The factors affecting repair and maintenance may significantly increase the life span of buildings, reduce costs, improve quality, increase productivity and consequently, fulfil the quantitative and qualitative goals of construction. Thus, determining the factors affecting this issue could be of great help in evaluating buildings. Proper selection of these factors is a multi-criteria decision-making problem involving definition of factors affecting the repair and maintenance of buildings, and their consideration as multiple criteria for the evaluation of buildings. In this paper, Delphi method and research literature are used to determine the factors affecting evaluation of buildings based on repair and maintenance. Also, the DANP (DEMATEL based on Network Analysis Process) hybrid approach is applied to calculate and evaluate all direct and indirect relationships between dimensions and components. The advantage of this approach lies in giving proper consideration to the relatively complex interdependencies of factors affecting performance. In this research work, an attempt is made to determine the basic characteristics of the repair and maintenance system in buildings, specify the correlation and relationship between the repair and maintenance criteria, and prioritize these criteria.