An assessment of maintenance cost of residential apartments in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Buildings require maintenance for their continuous operation at a higher level through their extended life. Early prediction of maintenance costs (MC) would enable efficient maintenance and smooth operations of the buildings and thereby ensure achieving value for the investment. The effects of factors on MC provide a chance to refine the design to ensure the optimisation of MC during early design development. Thus, this study aims to analyse the MC of high-rise residential apartments along with the effects of factors influencing MC in Sri Lanka. Initially, a questionnaire survey was conducted to assess the factors’ impact on the MC elements based on a 1-5 Likert scale. Then, a case study approach was employed using three high-rise residential apartments with above 30 floors located in Colombo to analyse the costs of MC elements. The data collected from semi-structured interviews and document review were analysed manually as a percentage of MC. The findings revealed that MC accounts for 30% of running costs (RC). According to Pareto analysis, 11 out of 29 sub-elements including lifts and escalators, maintenance management, repairs and replacement, and electric power and lighting contribute to 80% of MC. Further, most of the building design factors and technical factors highly affect the MC. The annual MC per GFA is about Rs. 350.00. It is expected that these findings would enable the designers to forecast the MC and focus on the relevant design and technical factors to optimise the maintenance costs of highrise residential buildings at the early design stages.