Toward safer and maintainable affordable housing design: the architectural safety design assessment (ASDA) framework

Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in design for maintainability remains an important issue in Malaysia's housing industry, especially for high-rise affordable housing where maintenance work may expose workers, residents and facility managers to safety risks. This study introduces the Architectural Safety Design Assessment (ASDA) framework, which integrates the Prevention through Design (PtD) concept to help architects include safety considerations at the early design stage. The study comprised three phases. First, literature, regulations and standards were reviewed, followed by content validation to identify the components of the ASDA framework. Second, the Delphi Method and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) were used to obtain expert consensus and prioritize safety design attributes. Third, the ASDA framework was developed based on expert feedback and analytical results. The findings identified 43 architectural safety design attributes across five architectural design variables, supported by 53 preventive measures aligned with relevant standards and regulations. The AHP results show that site planning and environmental design parameters are the most important factors in reducing maintenance-related risks during the early design stage. Practically, the ASDA framework offers a structured process for design review, scoring and classification, helping stakeholders integrate safety measures early and reduce long-term maintenance hazards and costs. The contribution lies in integrating architectural safety design attributes, PtD measures and expert-derived AHP weightings into a structured assessment framework for safe design for maintainability in affordable housing. The study synthesizes and extends existing safety, design and maintainability principles within the Malaysian affordable housing context.