Selection criteria of building material for optimising maintainability
Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
Maintainability of building facilities partially relies on the selection of building materials. Properly selected materials will minimise defects from common deterioration, improve ease of maintenance, and minimise maintenance cost throughout the designed life of building. Selecting building materials without considering maintainability aspects may result in increased maintenance problem in the post occupancy stage of the building. Previous maintainability studies focused on the good practices or strategies that can be applied during the design and the construction stage to control repetitive problems based on defect analysis of existing building elements. Furthermore, when selecting building material in previous studies, attention were given on performance, sustainability and cost factors, but ignoring maintainability factors of the materials. It can be concluded that there is insufficient attention given to the selection of building material with respect to maintainability, during the design stage. Insufficient consideration on maintainability is the most significant factor that cause deteriorations in the building material at the post occupancy stage, which was identified in previous research. This leads to a knowledge gap about the actual selection criteria for maintainable building material required to optimise building maintainability. This research is carried out to identify the selection criteria of maintainable building material, and the criteria of maintainability at post occupancy stage through the questionnaire survey among practitioners in the fields of architecture, building maintenance and structural engineering. Forty two selection criteria of maintainable building material and six criteria of maintainability in the post occupancy stage has been identified from the literature, and they were tested in two phases of survey and analysis. The major findings of this research are the six criteria, presented in order of most significant: "Technical Properties of Materials", "Documentation and Details", "Mechanical Properties of Materials", "Chemical Properties of Materials", "Material Economy" and "Social Benefit" which need to be given priority in maintainable building material selection. The result of this research can benefit the construction industry since this is the first time a researched guideline on the criteria for maintainable building material selection is made available
Description
Thesis (Ph.D (Facility Management))
Keywords
Building materials