Influencing Building and Infrastructure Poor Performance to Inadequate Maintenance Budget and Funding

Abstract

AbstractThis research aimed to establish the financial resource requirements for the maintenance management of public high school buildings and infrastructure. Quantitative methodology was employed in this research. The research included a study of relevant literature and the distribution of questionnaires to the target sample to gather the required data that seek to establish an improved maintenance management policy system for public high schools based on standard practice. The uThungulu District of KZN in South Africa was the selected geographical scope of this research. Thirty public high schools in the district were purposely selected for the study. The reasons include the proximity of the schools relative to where the researcher currently resides; resource constraints regarding the ability to fund transport costs to the various schools. The questions that were related to a maintenance funding and budget, functional requirements of public high school buildings and other infrastructure were correlated with the data that were generated from the maintenance management stakeholders at the various institutions. The research finding was that resource constraints continue to pose a challenge to public high schools’ maintenance departments. The research revealed that most (37.5%) of the respondents perceive that the method used for determining maintenance costs was to use the previous year’s budget and add a percentage amount and concluded that effective estimation techniques should be employed to satisfy the financial requirements of ten (10) to fifteen (15)% of the annual budget for maintenance activities of the institutions.KeywordsMaintenance funding and budgetFunctional requirementsBuildings and infrastructure