About Us

Introduction

The investment on building maintenance represents almost half of the total turnover of the construction industry and such reduction of resources has a direct effect on a nation’s economy. Recent studies have shown that the main factors that lead to building operations and maintenance problems are due to faulty designs, faulty construction, financial factors and maintenance related defects. The lack of maintainability considerations during the design and construction stages lead to building defects which account for expenditures of billions of dollars throughout the building’s lifecycle.

More so, the potentially unsafe conditions of buildings (specifically on high rise building façades) can be detrimental to the lives and health of construction workers, and may even jeopardise public safety and surrounding properties if left unaddressed. Building maintainability has been identified as an indicator of sustainability (ISO 21929-1) due to its overarching impact on the building function, its users, and the environment. It is an effective strategy in improving building performance while minimising the costs and resources required for a building to function efficiently throughout its lifespan, thereby helping transform the built environment sector towards higher productivity.

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For more than 25 years, Prof. Michael Yit Lin Chew and his team continue to study the maintainability issues of various categories of buildings under tropical conditions, as well as spearheaded the integration of maintainability, with green facilities management (FM) in mind throughout the life cycle of a facility, right from the planning/ design stage. The goal is to improve the standard and quality of design, construction and maintenance practices; as well as to achieve optimum performance throughout the lifespan of a facility within the minimum life cycle cost. Improving the knowledge of maintainability and setting maintainability benchmarks are the two key strategies set out for the integration of maintainability and green FM. The goal is fulfilled with the development of tools such as a comprehensive defect library, a material manual, a maintainability scoring system, and the Design for Maintainability guidelines which serve to establish a benchmark for quality design and construction, and maintenance best practices.