Langevine, R (2006) A decision support system for the maintenance management of buildings. PhD thesis, University of Alberta, Canada.
Abstract
Governing agencies across North America are currently facing extreme problems of deterioration, inadequacy, and insufficiency of their city's infrastructure facilities. The shortage of adequate funds has imposed serious constraints on how candidate maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement projects are planned, and executed. Asset managers are forced to compete with other cost centers to obtain the required funding for these renewal projects. Consequently, many urban infrastructure management agencies are falling behind in their efforts to improve and enhance the performance of their facilities. To effectively operate and manage a portfolio of diverse facilities it is essential to have a firm grasp on the asset base, to monitor the in-situ performance over its service life, and to know the operational and functional requirements as well as the financial implications. Further, asset managers must be able to execute maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement strategies based on perceived economic advantage and prudence, while reflecting management's strategic plans for the facility. Given the complex nature of the building's structure and make-up, with its intricate interconnection of systems and components, it is imperative for asset managers to be able to closely monitor the performance of each building asset, and set priorities to the large number of projects and select the ones that are most feasible given the funds that are available and the maximization of benefits to the facility. A Building Maintenance Decision Support System (BMDSS) has been developed to assist asset managers to monitor and model the deterioration of buildings (including their many systems and components), to forecast the remaining service life of components, and to prioritize building systems and components. It utilizes the detailed inspections performed at the lowest level of the building hierarchy, and employs a roll-up procedure to determine the condition rating of the building. Further, the developed BMDSS combines available condition rating data, regression trend of the designed service life, expert knowledge, and Markov transition properties to predict the future of buildings performance. The BMDSS also provides the framework for prioritizing MR&R projects based on the financial allocation that leads to maximum benefits within the framework of a defined budget.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | decision support; in-situ; replacement; deterioration; funding; infrastructure management; rehabilitation; renewal; service life; urban infrastructure |
| Index terms: | maximization, urban infrastructure, strategy, building maintenance, decision support, manager, deterioration, renewal, replacement, agency, inspection, prioritizing, infrastructure management, service life, maintenance management, funding, building system, in-situ |
| Subjects: | material degradation and durability, economic analysis, construction type, practitioner, materials science, engineering systems, asset management, decision analysis, sociology, building construction, quality assurance, infrastructure and transport systems, maintenance engineering, algorithms, management, renovation and retrofit, infrastructure engineering |
| Topics: | Urban Studies, Digital Applications, Roles and Professions, Construction Technology, Business Strategy, Construction Materials, Research Practice, Quality Management, Risk Management, Engineering Principles |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here