Current issues and barriers of maintenance management practices for public facilities in Malaysia

Abstract

There are significant challenges for local authorities in Malaysia in providing and managing the public facilities for the satisfaction of stakeholders. Therefore, the local authorities need to maintain the facilities to ensure the public to be able to use them effectively and comfortably. However, over the years, the local authorities faced countless critics and complaints regarding their performance in managing the facilities from the public. Moreover, the local authorities confronted maintenance cost issues while maintaining and operating the facilities, which lead to ineffective management. This unfortunate situation has tarnished the image of the local authorities, which supposedly act as a service provider to the public in their regions. This paper investigates the current maintenance management practices by the local authorities and to identify the barriers encountered during the implementation of maintenance management. The study utilized a comprehensive sample by distributing 149 questionnaires to the maintenance department of local authorities. The results of current practices were analyzed by using the mean value score and Relative Importance Index (RII) while the barriers were examined using the mean value score and Severity Index (SI). The results indicated that the current practices of the maintenance management conducted by the local authorities did not achieve the level of satisfaction which leads to the issues of ineffective maintenance management and the barriers that faced by the local authorities shows that building characteristics, vandalism and human factors have become the significant factors of maintenance cost issues. Consequently, the study provides the recommendation of directions and guidance towards the best practices of maintenance management to accomplish the maintenance efficiency and value for money throughout various strategies of improvements.