Defect management of hospital buildings

Abstract

Healthcare organisations are increasingly recognising the need to improve building performance in order to improve health care delivery, profits, and to reduce penalties. Hospital maintenance organisations are under constant pressure to plan maintenance work due to a shortage of funds on account of huge catalogues of defects in hospital buildings. While investments in hospital building maintenance are increasing, the requirement to increase building performance and user satisfaction is also increasing. The nature of building faults and the factors that influence hospital building maintenance management in Malaysia were explored. Primary data were collected through structured interview techniques involving six hospital maintenance organisations. According to the results of a survey interview involving six hospitals, water seepage, cracks, peeling paint, broken ironmongery, pipe leakage, damaged plasterboard, and discoloured paint are all widespread in hospital structures, according to the results of a survey interview involving six private and public hospitals. The key aspects that determine the maintenance management practise of hospital buildings are user attitudes, misuse/abuse, weather, and bad maintenance practice. The data revealed that hospital building users are demanding improved building performance through enhanced maintenance management service delivery. Implicit in the findings of this research is the lack of effective maintenance organisations. It is necessary to reorganise the hospital's maintenance organisations. From an ontological standpoint, the main findings of this study are generalizable to other hospitals and building typologies in and outside of Malaysia.

Key determinants of building maintenance in hospitals: the perspective of maintenance personnel

“…An unexpected finding showed “Age of building” was not considered as a very important determinant, even though past evidence has raised the importance of such issue. This echoed findings from an interview with hospital maintenance personnel (Olanrewaju et al , 2022) which found that “age of building” was not a major factor affecting the maintenance management. In addition, results from correlation analysis in Table 6 also did not show significant correlation between allocation of resources in terms of manpower and budget with the age of hospitals.…”

“…Complaint is a form of feedback by users; as much as possible, complaints should be avoided with preventive or proactive maintenance strategy before any defects or failure happens. Attitude of users (Olanrewaju et al , 2022) to pursue request for maintenance could be a check and balance action to ensure their dissatisfaction is heard. In outsource maintenance, the number of complaints will affect the attainment of key performance indicator of maintenance contractors.…”

“…Frequency of repair increased when the building was damaged when not used in its intended function. Misuse of facilities was also identified as a factor that affect maintenance in Malaysian hospitals (Olanrewaju et al , 2022). The effect of improper use on maintenance cost can be reduced with education and introducing operating manuals for properties (El-Haram and Horner, 2002).…”

“…The lack of maintenance deters buildings to add value to hospital’s corporate objectives and may affect the delivery of the health-care services. Research in hospital facilities management has increasingly gaining attention (Yik et al , 2012; Sthapit and Björk, 2020; Dahlan et al , 2022; Lai et al , 2022; Olanrewaju et al , 2022). However, amidst the limited past literature on hospital building maintenance, analyses of the key determinants is an area that is still under-explored, particularly in the context of Malaysian public hospitals.…”

Las intervenciones en la Torre campanario de Pisa: entre integraciones y liberaciones

“…Sus propiedades físicas y químicas varían espacialmente (Wu et al, 2019), lo que incide en que la magnitud de los asentamientos diferenciales sea aleatoria y desconocida (Naghibi et al, 2021). Además, este hecho no es identificado de forma temprana en las construcciones, debido a que solo es perceptible hasta el paso de los años con la inclinación de las construcciones y porque se trata de un hecho poco frecuente, del cual raras veces se tiene sospecha que pueda ser el agente de degradación (Atkinson, 2003;Watt, 1999Watt, /2007Olanrewaju et al, 2022).…”