Exploring the building maintenance challenges for heritage buildings: expert opinion

Poor maintenance of heritage buildings has caused various problems, such as deteriorating the condition of the structures, endangering safety, leading to potential accidents, and financial losses for owners, often resulting in abandonment. Ipoh, with its rich cultural heritage influenced by colonial history, faces challenges related to poor buildings conditions due to poor maintenance. This study will evaluate the building maintenance challenges for heritage buildings. Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews with three experts in heritage buildings maintenance management and by reviewing secondary data from journals and existing literature. The findings show that the building maintenance challenges for heritage buildings are financial problems, lack of maintenance guidelines, lack of skilled workers, lack of material availability, lack of institutional and training facilities, political factors, lack of government awareness and lack of local involvement. Through literature review and interview, maintenance strategies frameworks for heritage buildings had been developed in order to overcome the challenges. Provide sufficient budget, financial resources, develop comprehensive guidelines and standard or special guidelines, enhancing training program, innovative tools and method, increasing government awareness, and lastly education and awareness are strategies to overcome the challenges for heritage buildings.