Sustainability in the Context of Maintenance: Building Defects in the Malaysian University Campuses

Sustainable buildings are buildings design and operate to take
care of the requirements of both the present and future users.
Building required maintenance for high performance regardless
of whether it meets the sustainability consideration or not. An
important segment in the maintenance management system is the
analysis of defects in the buildings. Defect analysis is
significance if universities desire to succeed in modeling an
efficient maintenance management system for their
buildings and engineering services. This paper is part of an
ongoing research on the development of systemic maintenance
management for university buildings in Malaysia. The aim of this
paper is to determine, evaluate and categorize defects in the
university buildings in Malaysia. Questionnaires were
administered on 50 university maintenance organizations. With a
66% response rate, the findings suggest that some defects require
maintenance urgently than the others and on the basis of which it
is concluded that resources should be directed to the more urgent
ones while less urgent ones could be included in the subsequent
maintenance prgramme. The research found that lift failure,
faulty electrical systems and roof damages were the defects that
respondents considered extremely urgent to maintain. The paper
concludes by arguing that maintenance management is a
strategic issue in the management of university administrations.