On the effect of service life conditions on the maintenance costs of healthcare facilities

Global competitiveness and increasing performance requirements have placed facilities management (FM) under constraints of limited resources, particularly in non-core aspects of facilities, such as maintenance and operations. The hypothesis applied in this research is that the actual service life of buildings, their occupancy and their ambient environmental conditions affect the required maintenance resources of these facilities. The objective was to develop a facility coefficient aiming to adjust the allocation of maintenance resources to prevailing service conditions in healthcare facilities. The research uses deterioration patterns and predicted service lives of building components and systems under moderate, standard and intensive occupancy and under two categories of environment: marine and inland. In total, five configurations combining occupancy and environmental conditions were investigated through simulations and compared to a reference configuration defined as standard occupancy and inland environment along with a building designed service life of 75 years. The findings of the simulations show that maintenance resources in healthcare facilities vary between -9% and +18% of the standard configuration. The simulation results can be used for reliable allocation of resources for maintenance of healthcare facilities. Findings can be adapted for residential, office, public and educational facilities.