Strategies to address the main challenges faced by the maintenance personnel in the University of Sierra Leone

Abstract

A proactive maintenance strategy is essential to help maintain buildings. Unfortunately, university buildings' maintenance is often overwhelmed by challenges like inadequate maintenance, growing maintenance backlogs, and insufficient funding. Inadequate funding for building maintenance, lack of building maintenance standards, lack of preventive maintenance and lack of proper building maintenance strategy and policy are the major challenges that affect building maintenance efficiency. Therefore, to address the university's maintenance challenges, an effective maintenance strategy and policy are to be formulated. The aim of this study is to address the key challenges faced by maintenance staff. For this study, a quantitative technique was adopted to collect data via questionnaire survey from the university's maintenance department senior and junior personnel. The data collected were analysed using frequency analysis and the Average Index Formula (AIF). The findings were rated by the highest level of agreement and then presented in tables and figures. The findings revealed that, rapid respond to reported fault, followed by having adequate funding for maintenance were strongly agree. Also, the findings showed that, training maintenance personnel, planned preventive maintenance activities, and increasing awareness were other factors agreed as a strategy to address maintenance problem. Therefore, a sufficient budget should be set aside for maintenance tasks, with the utilization of resources closely monitored. It is vital to develop a maintenance policy and strategy as well as a proper asset management plan.