PurposeIn recent years, there have been many concerns about issues surrounding building maintenance, which are continually increasing. However, there is a lack of comprehensive studies on building maintenance issues, their effects and the way forward. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a comprehensive review of building maintenance issues, their effects and the way forward. It also aims to develop a conceptual model that can support future research.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of the literature published from 2009 to 2019 was carried out. Five relevant databases were searched, based on this study's search terms, and a narrative synthesis of the results from the included studies was carried out. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they fulfilled the inclusion criteria of this systematic review.FindingsThis study has identified and classified building maintenance issues, their effects and the way forward, and also developed a conceptual model that demonstrates the association between issues, their effects and the way forward. The way forward of the conceptual model focuses on effective management, technical capability, development of human resources and cost optimisation.Originality/valueThis paper addresses an important topic: the aspect in which it differs from existing studies is that, in the latter, the researchers studied a single sub-issue, whereas this systematic review includes a comprehensive study of building maintenance issues. Furthermore, this review has demonstrated how the way forward can moderate issues and their effects.

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Previous studies have reported that buildings consume nearly 36% of the total energy used and contribute towards 30% of the total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Therefore, improving energy efficiency in buildings is essential to enhance a sustainable built environment. This research employed a case study approach with the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) being selected as the case study. A number of buildings recorded high annual energy consumption (EC) data while others recorded low energy consumption. This was due to the absence of a benchmark line reference for campus buildings, thereby causing a significant difference in the energy consumption of each building. The study's aim was to develop an energy efficiency benchmark for university buildings by using statistical analysis. From statistical analysis, the standard practical range was between 72.5–141.0 kWh/m2/yr. Buildings with an energy consumption per unit area value below 72.5 kWh/m2/yr are regarded as best energy efficient buildings. In contrast, those above 141.0 kWh/m2/yr are considered poor energy efficient buildings. For recommendation, buildings that exceed the maximum value of this range require stricter supervision and monitoring by the university management.

Purpose The largest share of a building maintenance budget goes towards preventing or repairing building defects. Also, building defects shorten a building’s lifetime, impact the user’s safety and health, prevent the buildings from performing their functions well and repairing building defects generates waste. Therefore, this study aims to specify the factors that affecting the number of building defects and how to reduce their negative impacts. Design/methodology/approach A case study was used as a research strategy and convergent parallel mixed methods were used as research design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently, followed by independent analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data, and then merged the two sets of results according to the procedure of using the convergent parallel design. Descriptive statistics analysed quantitative data, whilst qualitative data was analysed by the content analysis technique. Findings The findings of this study explored the factors that affect the number of defects in buildings, the significant factors were related to the building’s life cycle in terms of design, construction, operation and maintenance phase; relevant attributes were construction teams, building users and maintenance teams. The study also addressed the approaches to minimise the negative impacts of those factors. Their negative impacts mainly contributed to increased building defects that increase maintenance costs, affect users’ safety and health, reduce buildings’ lifespan and cause environmental impact due to resource extraction. Originality/value The existing studies have not adequately addressed the significant factors that affect the number of building defects. Also, emerging technologies and environmental sustainability considerations related to building defects have not been linked in previous related work. Therefore, the present study has contributed to filling this gap.

Peat soil is very compressible, which leads to an excessive settlement. Stabilization of peat soil is the way to improve the engineering properties of peat soil through mixing peat with supplementary cementation materials. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the stabilization of peat soil using fly ash, bottom ash and ordinary Portland cement (OPC) to improve the engineering properties of peat soil. Also to examine the possibility of fly ash and bottom ash waste reduction through using them as a binder of the mixture in soil improvement application. In this study, fly ash and bottom ash were collected from generation wastes at coal- fired electric power and stabilization of peat soil was done by mixing peat soil with fly ash, bottom ash and OPC. Unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and Fourier transform scanning electron microscope (FESEM) was conducted before and after the stabilization of peat soil. Also, some essential physicochemical properties of a mixture have identified before the mixing process. The findings of the compressive strength of peat soil were equal to 5 kPa at its natural state and after stabilization strength of peat soil was equal to 47 kPa. FESEM micrographs have shown ultrastructure of peat stabilization appears as inherent and coherent while the ultrastructure of original peat appears as incoherent and sporadic. The findings have revealed the effectiveness of fly ash and bottom ash to improve the strength of peat and the applicability of the utilization of coal ash waste as binder materials.