Building Maintenance Management using Analytic Hierarchy Process

Due to the nature of the risk involved in building maintenance, maintenance of a building cannot be avoided during the lifetime of any construction project. Depending on the nature of the forthcoming circumstances which can be unavoidable at times, decisions have to be taken by the people in charge of the project with respect to maintenance. The factors influencing these decisions can be arranged in a model and can come out with the best possible solution to access the decision making process. The AHP is one of the solutions which will provide the necessary information and logical sequence to best access this situation.

This technique will aid the maintenance/facility manager involved in the project to identify, analyze and arrange the various variables involved during the service lifetime of the building.

With the use of AHP in maintenance management of a building, it will serve as a bridge to close the gap between knowledge and experience. Judgment skill of a person is developed with knowledge and experience hand in hand; the use of this analytic tool will provide a systematic and confident solution while taking decisions. The use of AHP in building maintenance management will provide a competitive edge over forecasting the various unpredictable aspects of the building maintenance.

Mr. Rohan Bataju made a research to provide a methodological analyzing process which separate out all the factors affecting the decision making criteria regarding the various components of maintenance management of a building, and arrange them in accordance to level of risk involved in each component and finally provide a priority order of the component which should be taken care of in a hierarchal order. The aim of his research is to use an already developed tool to analyze and categorize the factors related to maintenance regarding a constructed building and enable the people to make decisions depending on the situation which seem to overshadow the facility management process.

Comparison of Facility Management between two universities was done using AHP in order to better understand the trends in the style of facility managers and the importance they each provide regarding various components of FM. The comparison between the rankings of the priorities of the building components between the two educational institutions was also carried out in the end. The end goal is to see which type of facility management the managers adopt.

Even though various tools are available to access maintenance management in building construction, this research specifically used a probability tool called Analytic Hierarchy Tool which uses matrix attributes to organize, analyze and rank various components involved in maintenance management during the construction of a building. By using AHP, this research aimed to see what the overall perception of the facility manager is with respect to preventive maintenance, condition-based maintenance and corrective maintenance. 

Conclusion

The analytic hierarchy process is an assessment tool which converts the various decisions taken by the people involved in a systematic hierarchal structure in order to structure complex decisions. It was developed by T.L. Saaty and is based on mathematics and psychology. Keeping this in mind, when multiple and complex decisions have to be taken inside an environment where the criteria are interrelated, it depends on the person who provides the judgment which is based on the scale provided by the analytic hierarchy process. The sole purpose of the analytic hierarchy process is to access in the process of decision making when various alternatives are available as a solution and only one final solution is required.

Two independent universities were chosen in order to find out which type of maintenance strategy is followed by them. After having a conversation with the two facility managers representing the two universities, a comparison was carried out with the results which were obtained from survey. This result is published with various headings and is explained with facts and details why it is so. Among all the various components of a building these seven criteria i.e. roof, walls, floors, column and beams, sanitary and plumbing, electrical utilities and HVAC were chosen to assess this research finding as they were found out to be the most basic and essential components of any building system.

After using the analytic hierarchy process in order to analyze which maintenance management approach best suits the two universities, it was found out in unison that both university facility managers prefer preventive maintenance over condition based maintenance and corrective maintenance. When ranking was made after the analysis it was found that after preventive maintenance, condition based maintenance was preferred and then finally in the end corrective maintenance was the last resort.

In the selection of the critical components among the seven criterions which have been used in the analysis of this research, from the interviews and discussions it was found out that Sanitary and Plumbing, Electric Utilities and HVAC can be considered as the critical components since they are associated with the comfort zone of the people utilizing the building of the universities.

His thesis abstract is copied below.

Abstract

Maintenance is forever associated with the construction industry. This research sheds light on the three basic types of maintenance strategy i.e. corrective, condition-based and preventive maintenance and the seven basic criteria of a building, namely roof, wall, floor, columns and beams, sanitary and plumbing, electrical utilities and HVAC systems. The above mentioned three maintenance approach and the seven criteria of a building have been taken in order to analyze on this research. The Analytic Hierarchy Process being a powerful tool is used for the analysis purpose where multiple decisions have to be taken regarding the maintenance strategies and the seven building criterions. The main objective of this research is to find the priority order of the maintenance strategies based on the decisions collected from the facility/maintenance manager which can fulfill the basic maintenance approach for the mentioned seven criteria of the building.