Effect of design failure on maintenance of school / Amyrul Hanif Misrun

Malaysia is one of the nations that is quickly developing in the economy and building sector, and this has a significant influence on the country. But the problem of building defects still occurs directly or indirectly whether in commercial, residential, or educational buildings. Most of problems are related to poor maintenance management and failures in design. The issues that related are from the building negligence, discomfort and hazardous to the building users and building defects arise cause high maintenance. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impression of building design failures to the schools building that involving the maintenance management perceptions and gain the deeply knowledge in building design failures towards maintenance management. The methodology adopted for this research is through literature review, observation, and semi structured interview for collecting the data. A survey was conducted to collect the required data were adopted in this study. This study reveals the important factors that leading to defects in the design stage. According to the study the main defects that contributed to the failures of design are the unqualified supervision, insufficient reinforcement concrete cover, deficient structural design such as foundation, not complying with specification, painting under inappropriate conditions or on an inappropriate surface, insufficient site supervision and do not define suitable materials. Because of these main defects, it is giving an effect toward the maintenance of the school and the main factors are increases the maintenance expense, on maintenance work, increasing on maintenance workforce and on increasing maintenance frequency. The study recommends several actions to improve maintenance performance of the selected schools in Perak state which is Tenby, WestLake and Fairview International school. The designer must advise to take into account maintenance issues by using durable materials that are appropriate for harsh weather conditions. Every part of departments or team member should be cooperating with each other in working to ensure the quality of work can be improved and the maintenance of the building will be more orderly.