A review of maintenance prioritisation techniques in sustainable housing

Abstract

Purpose and Objective
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the methods that can be used to prioritise maintenance needs in housing to optimise the use of scarce resources for sustainability.

Problem Investigated

Housing is a very important human need and the need for sustainable housing cannot be over-emphasised. One of the requirements of sustainable construction is to maximise the service lives of structures through a combination of appropriate design and adequate maintenance. Hence maintenance is critical to sustainable housing. Increasing the service life of buildings through maintenance helps in reducing both the consumption of resources and the production of wastes that negatively impact the environment. In spite of this, maintenance is generally given very little in budgetary allocations compared to new works. As the construction market is experiencing dwindling maintenance budgets in the face of increasing maintenance costs globally, maintenance expenditure prioritisation has become more important than ever before in ensuring the optimum use of limited maintenance funds for sustainability. This paper reviews the available maintenance prioritisation methods as part of an ongoing research in sustainable housing maintenance.

Methodology
Various methods of maintenance priority setting are identified from available literature. The underlying principles and workings as well as the relative merits and demerits of each method are discussed.
Value of the research

This paper brings together various maintenance prioritisation methods to give maintenance managers and researchers a holistic view of the methods and their theoretical bases and procedures. It will enable maintenance managers to make informed choices in selecting appropriate priority setting techniques in facilities management.

Conclusion
The current global economic crisis has made the need for housing managers to adopt appropriate techniques to prioritise the use of limited financial resources more urgent than ever before. This paper provides the basic theoretical knowledge of the maintenance priority setting methods in use and should be of benefit particularly to housing managers. The next stage of the research will apply an appropriate method to a case study housing organization to provide an empirical demonstration of maintenance priority setting.
Keywords: Maintenance prioritisation, housing, facilities management, sustainability