Robust engineering in maintainability of building

Abstract

The process of designing a building is dependent on many requirements. Maintainability is an important design aspect that will affect the cost for management and the maintenance of a building within its expected life cycle. As an effect, there is now a need for a multidimensional diagnosis system that integrates maintainability that in accounting user’s environment and other design elements. However, in Malaysia, building maintainability is getting less attention and neglected as more focus is given on constructability and compliance with current regulations and law. Meeting up with this challenges, this study establishes a model that integrates maintainability as an important principle during the designing process using Robust Engineering (RE) principles that captures the interaction between the design elements with the user environment. The study then seeks 1) to evaluate current limitation of the design process in capturing the maintenance requirements; 2) to evaluate the potential of using Robust Engineering principles to capture maintainability consideration in building design; 3) to examine structural relationship between maintainability consideration and high maintainability building for a robust design outcome, and 4) to develop Robust Maintainability Integrated Design (R-MInD) guideline that evaluate maintainability incorporation at the design stage. Concentrating on a single function building usage (i.e. educational institution buildings), the study had utilised Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling technique to identify the influencing factors to improve the maintainability incorporation in the designing process. A total of eleven (n=11) experts ranging from designer, project manager, company director and facility managers from the government and private sectors were interviewed, while one-hundred and eleven (n=111) respondents were accounted in a survey to evaluate the current practice to propose improvement in building design practice. From the study, it has been established that there is a positive correlation between conformance and compliance with regulations and standards, integration of systems, space planning and materials and equipment selection for robust maintainability building design. Furthermore, the study had also found that RE principle is suitable to be incorporated during the designing process to improve building’s maintainability. The study further suggests a new process model and guidelines that can be adopted by the building designer that may improve the maintainability of a building. In conclusion, the findings of this research revealed that a realistic maintainability evaluation during the designing process depends on a complex system and subsystem consisting of many materials and equipments.