Discussion of proactive maintenance strategies in façades’ coatings of social housing

Abstract

Façades should meet the users’ needs, assuring a good global performance during their service life. Proactive maintenance is becoming increasingly crucial to the rational management of buildings and to reducing global expenses. It offers clear advantages over reactive maintenance, that is interventions which take place after several complaints or in emergencies. Proactive maintenance of building elements helps to create mechanisms to prevent and/or control their deterioration, through the implementation of maintenance actions that are both reliable and economic. This paper discusses a technical and economic analysis that compares three proactive strategies (preventive, predictive and improvement) for two types of coatings typically used in maintenance interventions of façades of social housing units in Lisbon: emulsion, and elastomeric coatings. Finally, crucial parameters to reduce the uncertainty and ensure the reliability of technical and economic analyses for each maintenance strategy are established and discussed. This methodology, the result of 2 years’ academic research (Flores, 2002), is intended to help clients, users, practitioners (especially maintenance managers) and decision-makers in their choice of façade intervention (type, frequency and cost estimate) at the buildings’ design and post-occupancy phases.