Development of a Quantitative Roofing System Maintenance Management Model for Public Housing in Hong Kong

Abstract

Property maintenance is becoming a more and more important issue in public organizations all over the world in view of the increasing maintenance and repair costs and awareness of environmental sustainability. Each year, the Hong Kong Housing Department (HD) spends over HK$3,500 million in maintaining and repairing the public housing buildings. With the ageing property stocks and limited budget, it is an important task for the maintenance managers to ensure funding is allocated to the properties mostly in need. The current maintenance management approach adopted in HD is mainly relied on individual manager’s assessment of property condition to decide on the priority of works. Such qualitative approach is fraught with problems of subjective judgment and inconsistency. Targeting at roofing system, this research study aims to develop a quantitative and objective model of maintenance management which combines the use of mathematical methods and opinions of experts and major stakeholders. To ensure a balanced outcome is obtained, two sub-models namely Condition Assessment Model and Asset Priority Model are developed respectively. The Condition Assessment Model will investigate the major sub-components of roofing system and their relative importance to the overall condition of the roofing system. In addition, it adopts an assessment methodology to transform the qualitative assessment to quantitative measurement. On the other hand, the Asset Priority Model will involve experts and major stakeholders to look into significant factors which influence the relative importance of asset towards achieving the missions of HD. The combined use of these two sub-models provides a quantitative means to prioritize the ranking of different roofing maintenance projects objectively. With such maintenance management model, not only the problems of subjective judgment and inconsistencies in decision making are minimized, but also the most cost effective budget strategy can be selected.

Date of Award	22 Jan 2016
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Ka Chi LAM (Supervisor)