Decision Support for Building System Design Using Maintainability Principles

Maintainability of a building system component refers to how easy it is to maintain the component with minimum cost and downtime. Unfortunately, maintainability issues do not receive enough attention in the design of building systems and cause serious problems in the postconstruction stage such as increased the life cycle cost of the facility, wasted maintenance materials, and discomfort caused to the users because of downtime. To prevent these problems, this study aims to develop a maintainability-based building system component selector (MBSCS). First, the designer identifies a component (e.g., condenser) and views all the brands and models of the component stored in MBSCS’s database. Second, the designer consults a checklist of maintenance actions for the said component in the same database. This information was obtained from building system component guidebooks and/or manufacturers. Out of these maintenance actions, the designer picks those that are relevant to the project. Based on this information, two selection criteria, namely, maintenance frequency and downtime caused by maintenance, are calculated in MBSCS. Two other selection criteria, namely, purchase price and service life, are obtained by the designer directly from the manufacturers and are input into MBSCS. The components in the database are ranked by MBSCS relative to the four selection criteria whose weights can be specified by the designer. An evaporative condenser is used in a case study to demonstrate the functioning of MBSCS. Considering the maintainability of building system components in the design stage could enhance the design of building systems and the management of the facility.