Design Maintainability Issues In Malaysia Case Study

1.0 Design Maintainability Issues in Malaysia

The building life cycle consists of design, construction, post-occupancy, and disposal phases. Generally, people think that the maintenance issue of building begins at post-occupancy phase because it is presumed that as building become aging, more maintenance will be required. However, it is partly the truth. Many research studies have shown that building defects and poor building performance are highly attributed to design deficiencies during the design stage, which result the maintenance becomes more frequent and more expensive.

Maintenance problem should be considered early in the design stage of construction project. Sivanathan et al. (2012) identified that the design phase activities involve the architectural and engineering design of the entire project. These decisions will influence all decisions made in subsequent stage and vice versa. Therefore, the design phase was a major source of problems for the subsequent phase if not well manages to specify at the outset of the project.

The concept of design maintainability could be initiated early in the design stage to minimize the maintenance problems and building defects.

In a collaborative setting, exchange and flow of information and ideas is very important not only design stage but all the time. All stakeholders such as designers, contractors, construction manager and building owner must properly communicate their requirement and expectations each other in order to achieve effective collaboration and outcomes. For example, poor communication happens when piping designer does not inform to the structural designer about wet area requirements, which subsequently causing insufficient thickness of concrete cover. Purchasing department acts independently without inquires designers while buying material based on lowest cost but not following design