School building maintenance strategy: A new management approach

Abstract

Maintenance is a continuous operation to keep the school buildings, furniture’s, and equipments in the best form for normal use. The maintenance of the school building is a daily activity of the institution and its personnel. It is an important factor in the delivery of teaching and learning education system as a whole. Maintenance activity covers the whole building envelope which includes the building structures, roofing, building exterior and interior, wall, columns and fixed furniture. Need analysis in maintenance research shows that many school buildings have small cracks in concrete columns, beams, structural walls, and floors but there is no major damage involved. This is due to the fact that many school buildings are more that 25 years old. Studies on heritage buildings in Malaysia have highlighted several building defects that are commonly found such as fungus stain, erosion of mortar joints, peeling paint, defective plastered renderings, cracking of walls, defective rainwater, roof defects and unstable foundations. Research shows that there are several suggestions to solve the problems in two suggestions which were in technical and building system. Scientific studies and laboratory test are suggested for technical maintenance where as for building system the used of computer Simulation is suggested to solve related maintenance management problems. Lists of literature review related to maintenance problem in Malaysian school building were analyzed. This literature will be used as an important basis for developing maintenance management computer simulation system.