Search results

Lord Carter’s (2015) “Review of Operational Productivity in NHS providers” stated that to improve National Health Service (NHS) England’s efficiency, operational productivity should be targeted in four main areas, one being estates management. NHS England’s estate includes a variety of buildings some of which are considered no longer fit-for-purpose, thus creating risk to patients and staff. These built assets require continuous maintenance, adding pressures to NHS England’s precarious financial situation. The purpose of this paper is to identify positive strategies and major constraints to achieving sustainable management of backlog maintenance (BM) across the NHS assets, and thus suggest balanced actions.

The research adopts a qualitative approach and combines: literature review of current BM methodologies; interviews with estates and facilities directors from seven NHS trusts on BM strategies; and a NHS trust detailed case study.

The major finding is that sustainable management of BM is achievable if there is a consistent, pro-active and long-term strategic approach where critical levels of BM are prioritised. Additional issues (i.e. appropriate methodology, performance metrics and links with clinical service delivery strategies) also need to be considered.

This study is relevant to the management of the NHS estate including development and adoption of sustainable strategies.

This paper offers original insights to the factors influencing healthcare estates’ BM at a time when the UK policy agenda is targeting infrastructure operational efficiency and organisations are seeking more comprehensive methodologies.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel model for maintenance backlog (MB) of physical assets and structure it in a framework for integrated planning (IPL).

Reliability theory principles for modelling MB are used. Furthermore, to structure a framework for IPL, literature study combined with earlier case studies is used.

The framework for IPL facilitates the model of MB. In addition to providing real-time diagnosis indicators, MB is regarded as valuable information for decision support in IPL.

Development of MB applied to IPL.

School infrastructure is one of critical factors that significantly contribute to the educational outcomes, and therefore, maintaining the high quality of school infrastructure becomes of critical importance. Due to the ageing of school assets over time in combination with budget constraint and rapid growth of student enrolment, many public schools are currently struggling to maintain the required standard for long term. However, to date, the goal of providing the best maintenance practices to public schools has not been achieved.

The present study focuses on studying the balance between the asset and maintenance management strategies and the funding model through conducting state-of-the-art literature review and qualitative analysis in the context of public schools in Australia and other developed countries around the world. Review of journal articles, different government reports and other available resources were used to collect and analyse the data in this study.

As part of this review, significant under investment in maintenance and asset renewals were identified as main challenges in asset management in public school facilities. Although different maintenance strategies were used in school infrastructure, adequate funding, adequate robust asset management plans (AMPs) and the involvement of private sectors have been identified as the key factors that govern the success in school infrastructure maintenance. It also shows that funding of approximately 2–3% of asset replacement value (ARV) on school infrastructure is required to maintain school facilities for long-term. Further, the procurement methods such as public private partnership including private finance initiatives (PFIs) have shown great improvements in maintenance process in school infrastructure.

The study provides a review of different AMPs and funding models in school infrastructure and their efficiencies and shortcoming in detail. Different states and countries use different maintenance models, and challenges associated with each model were also discussed. Further this study also provides some conclusive evidence for better maintenance performance for school buildings.

This paper aims to identify the different system approach that is equipped with decision making processes. Presently, most maintenance organisations are still implementing conventional methods rather than fully integrated information and communication technology (ICT) to manage the information database on maintenance of residential building. The significant factor to select an ICT is much more advantageous than just a way to improve interfirm communication and cooperation on maintenance management processes and be able to perform the task needed without stressing the budget. ICT could be a pillar of fundamental importance for the implementation of an effective and efficient maintenance management on residential building and facility.

This paper presents a review of recent publications on the topic regarding residential maintenance systems, which also takes into consideration the heritage structures, due to their same maintenance requirements and processes.

The findings reveal the need for ICT tools and techniques specific to the needs of reducing poor service delivery, inadequate financial support, poor maintenance plan and maintenance backlogs.

The paper concludes with a comprehensive research framework of ICT-based system as the basis for further progress in the development of the residential maintenance schemes of system.

Inadequate strategic planning and maintenance budget may undermine the maintenance of the Higher Education Institution Building (HEIB). Studies have shown that a customised maintenance concept such as Soft System Methodology (SSM) can improve public building maintenance operations. There is a paucity of studies regarding public HEIB maintenance in Nigeria via an SSM approach. Therefore, the research investigated the state of public HEIB and developed a framework to improve public HEIB maintenance practices in Nigeria.

The research adopted SSM to understand Nigeria’s public HEIB maintenance practices. The SSM permitted a substitute approach to improve public HEIB maintenance practices via a developed framework. Data were collated via virtual interviews with experts, and findings were presented in line with the SSM seven steps.

Findings show that besides the shoddy state of public HEIB maintenance, there is no public digitalised HEIB framework to improve maintenance practices across Nigeria’s higher education institutions. The study developed a digitalised framework with the support of Computerised Maintenance Management System from the findings. It would reposition the public HEIB and stir up various agencies/departments/units managing maintenance for better service delivery via integrated delivery, practical, methodological and managerial aspects.

The research investigated Nigeria’s public HEIB maintenance practices via SSM to identify the required document and propose a feasible framework to improve Nigeria’s HEIB maintenance practices. Besides the developed conceptual framework, Nigeria’s HEIB maintenance practitioners and higher institution chief executives can use the recommended framework as guidelines to improve HEIB maintenance practices.

IT may seem anomalous that, half‐way through a year during which the importance of productivity has been stressed from a thousand platforms, the first major conference on redundancy should be held. Yet the two themes are so closely interwoven that the Industrial Welfare Society, who organised it, showed commendable acumen in arranging for a wide‐ranging discussion on the country's wasted labour resources.

This paper proposes a method to model and assess the availability and reliability of a system when numerous factors such as system complexity, wide range of failure modes, environment, and sustainability may influence system behaviour.

The approach for reliability/availability study is using continuous time stochastic simulation (Monte Carlo simulation) and is based on seven steps for covering logical phases from system description to simulation result discussion. The feasibility and benefits of this approach are shown in a case study on cogeneration plant.

Owing to the factors influencing the system behaviour, the opportunity to carry out system availability/reliability assessment through analytical models will be many times very restrictive. Thus a general approach to this problem is proposed based on Monte Carlo (stochastic) simulation. The simulation of the system's life process will be carried out in the computer, and estimates will be made for the desired measures of performance. The simulation will then be treated as a series of real experiments, and statistical inference will then be used to estimate confidence intervals for the performance metrics.

Individuals, companies as well as society in general are becoming more and more dependent on increasingly complex technical systems. Moreover, failure of these complex systems often causes a major loss of service with potentially serious consequences (i.e. critical risk). Thus their dependability with its facets such as reliability, availability, safety has become an important issue. For example, the ability of reliability/availability assessment of such systems is invaluable in industrial domains. Indeed reliability/availability assessment is used for various purposes such as maintenance strategy selection, maintenance planning, production planning, risk and cost evaluations. To face with this complexity, the existing analytical models are not well adapted to carry out system modelling and assessment due mainly to assumptions that are difficult to validate. This paper looks into this issue by proposing a generic approach based on Monte Carlo (stochastic) simulation.

The Monte Carlo simulation method allows one to consider various relevant aspects of systems operation that cannot be easily captured by analytical models. The utilisation of this method is growing for the assessment of overall plants availability and the monetary value of plant operation.

This paper aims to investigate how digital capabilities associated with building information modelling (BIM) can integrate a wide range of information to improve built asset management (BAM) decision-making during the in-use phase of hospital buildings.

A comprehensive document analysis and a participatory case study was undertaken with a regional NHS hospital to review the type of information that can be used to better inform BAM decision-making to develop a conceptual framework to improve information use during the health-care BAM process, test how the conceptual framework can be applied within a BAM division of a health-care organisation and develop a cloud-based BIM application.

BIM has the potential to facilitate better informed BAM decision-making by integrating a wide range of information related to the physical condition of built assets, resources available for BAM and the built asset’s contribution to health-care provision within an organisation. However, interdepartmental information sharing requires a significant level of time and cost investment and changes to information gathering and storing practices within the whole organisation.

This research demonstrated that the implementation of BIM during the in-use phase of hospital buildings is different to that in the design and construction phases. At the in-use phase, BIM needs to integrate and communicate information within and between the estates, facilities division and other departments of the organisation. This poses a significant change management task for the organisation’s information management systems. Thus, a strategically driven top-down organisational approach is needed to implement BIM for the in-use phase of hospital buildings.

The economic recession in the USA during the late 1980s and early 1990s resulted in many organizations putting off scheduled maintenance of their physical plants. This has resulted in an enormous deferred maintenance backlog that companies are just beginning to attack. Software products are beginning to appear that take the building deficiency data collected during a physical audit and combine it with other data such as cost spreadsheets, financial investment models and computeraided facilities management (CAFM) software. Such integrated software, which can incorporate multimedia information, is proving to be a powerful forecasting and strategic planning tool for management. Describes the technology involved in conditions assessment and how it is being used for real property and facility assessment purposes.

This paper aims to quantify and critically analyze the best practices of a comprehensive environmental stewardship strategy (ESS), which included a guaranteed energy savings program (GESP) that utilized an energy service company (ESCO).

The environmental and economic benefits and limitations of an approach utilizing an ESCO are critically analyzed in the context of implementing a comprehensive university sustainability strategy.

A GESP, which utilized the technical and financial expertise of energy service companies, improved the operational efficiency, decreased the ecological footprint, and reduced the operating costs of the university.

Energy‐saving projects are “win‐win” situations, addressing both economy and ecology. Utilizing energy service companies in the university setting is a useful method to catalyze university administration to support sustainability initiatives and accelerate the implementation of comprehensive sustainability strategies.

The current waste rampant at most universities provides a large number of opportunities to improve environmental stewardship while reducing operating costs. This paper provides a new model utilizing energy service companies to capitalize on these opportunities to move universities towards sustainability.