PurposeThe purpose of this article is to critically evaluate maintenance strategies and determine to what extent models from other sectors can be applied to building maintenance.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a theoretical paper based on a number of Swedish studies, both case studies and questionnaires. From these a number of stylized facts have been identified and the purpose is to explain and draw conclusions from these.FindingsThe main finding is that there are a number of specific uncertainties that affect building maintenance planning making more detailed long‐term plans less meaningful. A new structure for maintenance is proposed focusing on long‐term strategies goals for various buildings/components and then short run adjustments when new information comes up.Research limitations/implicationsThe case for the new model needs to be strengthened by further studies, including studies from other countries.Practical implicationsMaintenance activities will be more important as the large building stock from the 1950s and 1960s needs to be renovated or demolished. A rational structure and realistic expectations concerning maintenance planning is then important.Originality/valueThe most important contribution of the article is to underline the importance of different types of uncertainty for the structure of maintenance planning for building.

Sweden has committed itself to comply with EU-directive 2009/28/EC on energy from renewable sources and 2012/27/EU on improvement in the efficiency of energy. Measures in the existing housing stock, such as installing photovoltaics (PV), provide a means of contributing to the goals above. The purpose of this paper is to study how the organization of property management and the decision-making structure in tenant-owner cooperatives (TOCs) in Sweden facilitates or hampers the adoption of large-scale residential building applied photovoltaics (BAPV) in this housing sector. Data collected through seven semi-structured interviews of executive board members in seven housing cooperatives were descriptively analyzed and the results indicate that the decision to adopt BAPV in TOCs does not follow the common frameworks of adoption of innovations. The choice by TOCs to adopt BAPV depends more on the wish to lower operating costs than on efforts to promote a sustainable environment and various principal-agency problems during the decision-making process, as well as during the implementation phase create challenges to the adoption of BAPV. There is a need to strengthen the quality and management of knowledge, as well as procurement proficiency in the TOCs in order to harness the potential for BAPV in the sector.

The reported maintenance costs per unit area within the public rental housing sector in Sweden are consistently higher than those within the private rental sector. This paper uses crosssectional panel data analysis as well as a questionnaire survey sent to 196 managers in the private and public housing sectors to identify the factors that might explain this divergence. The findings indicate that “fundamental” factors such as the age of the houses or the composition of the tenants cannot explain the observed difference. However how the activities are classified and the timing of the measures are factors that can. The conclusions from the study are that the public companies should act more as the private sector in their accounting; wait longer than they currently do before carrying out some renovations; and that they should be more stringent when determining the resources to spend on large-scale maintenance and/or renovation projects.

The purpose of the paper is to critically evaluate the conceptual distinction between investment and maintenance. The study starts from a number of definitions in the literature and discusses these from the perspective of standard investment theory. The article argues that the standard concept of investment covers all relevant decisions and also puts the focus on the future consequences of decision and not whether it restores an earlier standard or not. The research implications are that investment and maintenance planning need to be analysed together and that the distinction between investment and maintenance is uninteresting from a decision theoretic and resource allocation perspective. The practical implications of the article are that what usually is called investment planning and maintenance planning need to be integrated. The originality in the paper lies primarily in the questioning of the usefulness of the concept of maintenance in a dynamic age where the relation to earlier characteristics and functions becomes less and less interesting. The role of the maintenance concept is now primarily related to various administrative systems (accounting, taxation) but is not so relevant from a forward looking resource allocation perspective.

Principal-agency problems due to hidden incentives might be amplified, for example, under circumstances when unjustified trust in an inspector is associated with higher perception of building quality. This paper sets out to determine whether a significant difference exists in the owner’s perception of the building quality based on the perception of the inspector and the inspection process within multi-dwelling housing. A principal-agent theoretical perspective and the question of trust is applied on data from a survey sent to 1563 housing cooperatives in Sweden and analysed using a one-sided ANOVA as well as Kruskal-Wallis and post-hoc Dunn’s test. The major finding is that differences in perception associated with the company size of the developer, the timing of the inspection as well as the complexity of the process for the owners affects reported defect. The main implication is that efforts to address shortcomings related to the gap between the developer and the owner, in the context of building quality and perceived severity of defects, need to be customised to different owner groups. A better understanding of the inspection process by the owner improves active participation, which leads to efficient quality improvement. Society benefits from improved comprehension and utilisation of the results.