Developing a software application for building maintenance reporting system in Malaysia public university

Abstract

Building maintenance is a complex operation that requires the right skills, experience and technology to manage a building premise. Technology utilisation, such as mobile technology is very important for accurate information to be accessed by the right person in charge at the right time and place. Thus, this study aims to establish an information delivery system of context-awareness applications for building maintenance of public universities in Malaysia based on user requirement and maintenance workflow. A total of eighteen public universities were chosen in the process of reviewing the development and current practice of building maintenance. Next, the current tools and technologies for building maintenance were examined and based on this information, the requirements of building maintenance in relation to context-aware information were identified. The identification was made by comparing several workflows from government agencies, universities and published journals to obtain common elements for establishing a standard building maintenance report for context- awareness. The validation of the establishment standard was done by employing semi- structured interviews with user-centred design method that emphasised user requirement and its context elements. To ease the validation process, a prototype of mobile technology for building maintenance reporting system known as i-Maintenance was developed. It was found that there were six common stages for establishing the standard building maintenance report and the concept of “on-the-go Maintenance” was well accepted with 80% respondents agreed, 80% respondents agreed that context-aware technology had potential value and contained extra features,whereas 85% respondents agreed on the work ability and user friendliness of i-Maintenance. The weakness of building maintenance reporting system that engagedwith the context-aware technology was the unstable cellular phone signals. However,what was interesting about this technology was that specific information would bedelivered individually to the specific person in charge. Finally, it can be concluded that the concept of supplying specific information and services to the building maintenance manager has become technically and financially feasible because of the capability of integrating mobile devices, context-awareness, data, voice and positioning technologies.