Maintainability of Facilities: For Building Professionals

Citation

Warren, C.M.J. (2012), "Maintainability of Facilities: For Building Professionals", Property Management, Vol. 30 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2012.11330eaa.003

Maintainability of Facilities: For Building Professionals

Editorial

Article Type: Book review From: Property Management, Volume 30, Issue 5.

Authors:  CHEW Yit Lin, MichaelPublication Year:  2010Publisher: World ScientificPlace of Publication: SingaporePages: 523Price: £56.29ISBN:  13 978-981-4291-75-0

Maintainability of Facilities: For Building Professionals has the stated aims of improving the standard and quality of design, construction and maintenance practices to produce efficient facilities that require minimum maintenance.  The author, Professor Michael Chew, is from the Department of Building at the National University of Singapore where he teaches construction technology and maintainability of buildings. 

The book explores technical issues related to maintainability of major property components and highlights the implications relating to their maintainability and the selection of materials which can contribute to high maintainability. The focus is on the integration of maintainability at the design stage of a buildings life cycle with a view to maximising the value of the asset throughout its useful life rather than the often seen separation of the design / construction phase from the in use life of the building.  To enable such integration the book advocates, improving knowledge of maintainability and setting maintainability benchmarks which is achieved by the development of a comprehensive defect library, a material manual and a maintainability scoring system.

The book is divided into nine chapters the first of which provides an introduction to maintainability and establishes the role of performance benchmarking in raising the maintainability of facilities.  The next five chapters focus on specific building location and their associated defects, specifically wet areas, facades, basements, and roofs.  These chapters provide detailed analysis of many of the commonly encountered maintenance issues and are supported with diagrams and photos of defective buildings to illustrate the maintenance issue under consideration.  Many of the examples used are drawn from the authors region of Singapore although the building systems and defects encountered are not limited to this region. 

Chapter Six, deals with mechanical and electrical systems including lifts and HVAC systems. Again each section includes comprehensive illustrations and photographs of building defects and the maintenance issues these items of plant bring. 

The last chapter of the book is dedicated to grading systems and like many new texts it includes a detailed analysis of the sustainable building rating systems including LEED, BREEAM, Green Star and many of the building energy rating systems including Energy Star, NABERS and National University of Singapore’s, Maintainability Scoring System.  This chapter provides a very useful tool for understanding and comparing the many grading systems currently in use around the world. 

The target audience for this book are practitioners and students in architecture, engineering and, property and facilities management.  I would recommend this text particularly to those working in the Asia region where many of the examples discussed in the book are drawn from.

Clive M J WarrenUniversity of Queensland, Business School, Brisbane, Australia.