EFFECT OF FAULTY DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION ON BUILDING MAINTENANCE

EFFECT OF FAULTY DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION ON BUILDING MAINTENANCE
 
ABSTRACT
The study examined the effects of faulty design and construction on the maintenance of building. A survey of randomly selected samples of 20 builders and 15 architects were conducted. Questionnaires were used to collect data from Architects and Builders. The survey included 11 groups of defects and sub defects in each groups. The predominant severity effects of each defects was assessed and ranked based on the severity index as ranked by both the Builders and the Architects. The results shows that 7 defects were rated as most severe, 54 as moderately severe and 6 defects as slightly severe defects. The results also show that increase in maintenance work is the most predominant effects on building maintenance among other factors of defect with an index value of 100.00 as perceived by both the rank of the Architects and that of the builders. The research however includes a hypothesis that Architects and Builders generally agree on the ranking of the severity defects which was tested and proven to be true. The study concluded that there should be a design review before finally approving the design for construction; maintenance expert should not be overlooked in the planning stage of the project and most importantly the employment of professionals for any building projects.
 
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1    Background to the Study
'To fail to plan is to plan to fail.' The essence of all result-oriented work may be identified in this quotation. In the context of design one can adapt this phrase to, 'if a designer fails to plan well the plan will turn out badly'. In understanding this phrase one can use a law of physics as a metaphor. Newton's third law of force is 'For every action there is a reaction'. For designers this law could be interpreted as 'for every design decision/consideration (action) there is a consequence (reaction)'. As such this research tries to explore the actions of design and the consequence of their actions.
The relationship between design, construction and maintenance is closely related but not easily distinguished. (Maisarah, 2012) explained the vital role of design in the early stage of project management. They stated that a functional design can promote skill; economy, conveniences, and comforts while a non-functional design can impeded activities of all types of detract from quality of care, and raise cost to intolerable levels. A typical saying by Vonnegut: everybody want to build and nobody want to do maintenance. In Nigeria building design are copied from other countries without considering the conditions that lead to such design, hence maintenance experts are seldom included to advice on maintenance efficiency of such design. In a related development (Iyagba, 2005) reveal that there are substantial numbers of people who do not know the meaning of maintenance.