Maintenance Strategic Plan for School Buildings in Malaysia from theOwner’s and Technical’s Perspectives

Abstract

Purpose: To establish the needs of maintenance strategic plan for Malaysia’s school building. This  identifying  leads  to the detection of lack of comprehensive maintenance of school buildings and analyzing the impact of maintenance strategic plan on school buildings in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: This study is focusing on a quantitative method to identify the variables that mostly influence the maintenance of school buildings in Malaysia. The respondents were consisted of school building owners and technical teams in Peninsular Malaysia. Almost seventy-five (75) percent of school buildings in Malaysia are categorized as public schools whereby Ministry of Education (MOE) acts as the building owner and Ministry of Public Works as the technical experts. Thus, the focus target group is assessed using structured interview among the 35 respondents representing the school building’s owner. The data were analyzed by Descriptive Statistics using Statistical Package for the Social Science software version 24. Findings: Results from this research show that the major factors in lack of maintenance of school buildings are lack of technical experts, limited financial resources and poor implementation of building inspection. Hence, the strategic planning to overcome these issues include to provide specific budget for maintenance, develop standard guideline for reporting building defects and schedule regular inspection from technical experts. The impacts of implementing comprehensive maintenance in school buildings are as following; reduces the cost of maintenance in future, ensures the safety and health aspects of the users and enhances the educational building quality. Research limitations/implications: This paper is limited to the identification that contributes to a lack of maintenance strategic plans to overcome the issues for school buildings in Malaysia. The respondents for this study came from the sample  of building owners and technical experts of school building in Malaysia. Social Implications: The quality of school building maintenance might be enhanced by focusing on the significant indicators that commonly give an impact to the maintenance works carried out on the school buildings.  Originality/value: Limited studies had been conducted in the contexts of school buildings maintenance, especially from Malaysian perspective.