Facility Management Team Research Articles

FACTORS AFFECTING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MAINTENANCE IN POSTGRADUATE HOSTELS IN HIGHLY RANKED NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

This paper examined factors affecting efficient maintenance of postgraduate hostels in highly ranked Nigerian Universities. The study population consists of selected top-ranked universities in south-western Nigeria according to times higher education ranking year 2020 namely: Covenant University, University of Ibadan and University of Lagos. The sample size was made up of 120 students, 40 selected from each institution based on convenient sampling techniques. A well self-structured questionnaire was administered as an instrument to collect relevant data appropriate for the survey. Out of the 120 questionnaires distributed, the entire 120 were retrieved. The aim of this paper is to determine the major factors that affect efficient maintenance in Postgraduate hostels. The study which is a survey collated data that were analyzed using descriptive statistics on an excel spreadsheet with the aid of the SPSS software. The findings showed that response time is a major factor that affects efficient maintenance in the hostels which could affect students comfort. The study recommends that the universities should create a special facility management office in each of the postgraduate halls of resident’s order than the existing facility management team and employ facility management professionals. That way, students will conveniently have easy access to the team so as to lay their complaints. The university management should also create an electronic customer service platform for laying down complaints and collecting feedback for progress of work done, while evaluation of Student’s occupancy should be a routine exercise.

Facilitators and barriers to effective supervision of maternal and newborn care: a qualitative study from Shinyanga region, Tanzania

ABSTRACT Background: Despite routine supportive supervision of health service delivery, maternal and newborn outcomes have remained poor in sub-Saharan Africa in general and in Tanzania in particular. There is limited research evidence on factors limiting the effectiveness of supportive supervision in improving the quality of maternal and newborn care. Objective: This study explored enablers of and barriers to supportive supervision in maternal and newborn care at the district and hospital levels in Shinyanga region in Tanzania. Methods: This study employed a qualitative case study design. A purposeful sampling approach was employed to recruit a stratified sample of health system actors: members of the council health management team (CHMT), members of health facility management teams (HMTs), heads of units in the maternity department and health workers. Results: This study identified several barriers to the effectiveness of supportive supervision. First, the lack of a clear policy on supportive supervision. Despite the general acknowledgement of supportive supervision as a managerial mechanism for quality improvement at the district and lower-level health facilities, there is no clear policy guiding it. Second, limitations in measurement of progress in quality improvement; although supportive supervision is routinely conducted to improve maternal and newborn outcomes, efforts to measure progress are limited due to shortfalls in the setting of goals and targets, as well as gaps in M&E. Third, resource constraints and low motivation; that is, the shortage of resources – CHMT supervisors, health staff and funds – results in irregular supervision and low motivation. Conclusion: Besides resource constraints, lack of clear policies and limitations related to progress measurement impair the effectiveness of supportive supervision in improving maternal and newborn outcomes. There is a need to reform supportive supervision so that it aids and measures progress not only at the district but also at the health facility level.

Natural Language Processing Model for Managing Maintenance Requests in Buildings

In recent years, facility management (FM) has adopted many computer technology solutions for building maintenance, such as building information modelling (BIM) and computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). However, maintenance requests management in buildings remains a manual and a time-consuming process that depends on human management. In this paper, a machine-learning algorithm based on natural language processing (NLP) is proposed to classify maintenance requests. This algorithm aims to assist the FM teams in managing day-to-day maintenance activities. A healthcare facility is addressed as a case study in this work. Ten-year maintenance records from the facility contributed to the design and development of the algorithm. Multiple NLP methods were used in this study, and the results reveal that the NLP model can classify work requests with an average accuracy of 78%. Furthermore, NLP methods have proven to be effective for managing unstructured text data.

Artificial intelligence exploitation in facility management using deep learning

PurposeThis paper aims to apply a methodology that is capable to classify and localize mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) elements to assist facility managers. Furthermore, it assists in decreasing the technical complexity and sophistication of different systems to the facility management (FM) team.Design/methodology/approachThis research exploits artificial intelligence (AI) in FM operations through proposing a new system that uses a deep learning pre-trained model for transfer learning. The model can identify new MEP elements through image classification with a deep convolutional neural network using a support vector machine (SVM) technique under supervised learning. Also, an expert system is developed and integrated with an Android application to the proposed system to identify the required maintenance for the identified elements. FM team can reach the identified assets with bluetooth tracker devices to perform the required maintenance.FindingsThe proposed system aids facility managers in their tasks and decreases the maintenance costs of facilities by maintaining, upgrading, operating assets cost-effectively using the proposed system.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper considers three fire protection systems for proactive maintenance, where other structural or architectural systems can also significantly affect the level of service and cost expensive repairs and maintenance. Also, the proposed system relies on different platforms that required to be consolidated for facility technicians and managers end-users. Therefore, the authors will consider these limitations and expand the study as a case study in future work.Originality/valueThis paper assists in a proactive manner to decrease the lack of knowledge of the required maintenance to MEP elements that leads to a lower life cycle cost. These MEP elements have a big share in the operation and maintenance costs of building facilities.

Lifecycle Exchange for Asset Data (LEAD)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to outline the problems associated with asset information management using the Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) standard and to analyse the causes of industry failure to successfully adopt the standard. Based on this analysis, the paper will propose a process model, namely, Lifecycle Exchange of Asset Data (LEAD) to manage asset dataflow between all building stakeholders from design to construction and ultimately to the facility management team. This model aims to help the construction supply chain to produce complete and high-quality asset data that supports the operation phase of the built environment.Design/methodology/approachA review of relevant studies provided a theoretical background for this study. The authors then collected and analysed COBie data from five live construction projects using building information modelling (BIM) projects from different design and construction companies. The process model is based on an industry placement within Bouygues UK construction company, which was a Tier 1 building contractor in London in the period from December 2016 to December 2018. The researcher used an inductive approach observing current practises in two construction projects to produce “LEAD” model. Then a focus group was conducted with industry experts to discuss and refine the process model.FindingsAnalysis of literature and data collected in the course of this study revealed that although COBie is a BIM Level 2 standard in the UK, there is currently a low success rate in producing complete and accurate COBie data in the UK construction industry. This low rate is because of COBie’s rigid data syntax/structure, complexity and ambiguity of its data exchange process, which suggests that COBie may not be the future of the industry. Based on these findings, the study proposed a process model, namely, “LEAD,” to improve COBie output and also to be used with project-specific information requirements.Practical implicationsTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to focus solely on asset data exchange process using COBie standard and highlights the problems the industry faces in this remit. The study is based on industry placement for two years, so the analysis is based on actual and current industry problems. Current industry practices also informed the “LEAD” model, and the model provides a step-by-step guidance in producing and exchanging BIM asset data in all stages of the building lifecycle.Originality/valueThis paper provides a detailed analysis of the most common problems associated with COBie as an asset data exchange standard. Understanding these problems is of high value for industry practitioners to avoid them in projects. The paper also proposed a novel process model that can be used either to improve COBie quality or can be used with any project-specific data requirements.

From fading novelty effects to emergent appreciation of Activity-based Flexible Offices: Comparing the individual, organisational and spatial adaptations in two case organisations

Activity-based Flexible Offices (AFOs) are innovations in workspace design that have been increasingly implemented in organisations in recent years. There are conflicting research results on the long-term consequences of implementing AFOs. This paper investigates the changes (if any) that occur over time, in: 1) employee satisfaction with AFO solutions and perceived work support, 2) ways of working and using AFOs and 3) the AFO solution. Two organisations participated in the study. The data collection involved: (i) semi-structured interviews with 26 employees and (ii) process enquiries involving the collection of secondary data and interviews with facility management teams. The findings indicate that limited options for improving an AFO solution lead to lingering work environment problems. By contrast, modifying the solution through systematic processes based on employee feedback helped resolving the initial problems. Over time, this led to an increased appreciation and a sense of collective ownership of the AFO solution.

Engineering-out hazards: digitising the management working safety in confined spaces

PurposeThis paper aims to report upon the further development of a hybrid application programming interface (API) plug-in to building information modelling (BIM) entitled confined spaces safety monitoring system “CoSMoS”. Originally designed to engineer-out environmental hazards associated with working in a building’s confined spaces (during the construction phase of a building’s life-cycle), this second generation version is expanded upon to use archival records to proactively learn from data generated within a sensor network during the building’s operations and maintenance (O&M) phase of asset management (AM).Design/methodology/approachAn applied research methodological approach adopted used a two-phase process. In phase one, a conceptual model was created to provide a “blueprint map” to integrate BIM, sensor-based networks and data analytics (DA) into one integral system. A literature review provided the basis for the conceptual model’s further development. In phase two, the conceptual model was transposed into the prototype’s development environment as a proof of concept using primary data accrued from a large educational building.FindingsAn amalgamation of BIM, historical sensor data accrued and the application of DA demonstrate that CoSMoS provides an opportunity for the facilities management (FM) team to monitor pertinent environmental conditions and human behaviour within buildings that may impact upon occupant/worker safety. Although working in confined spaces is used to demonstrate the inherent potential of CoSMoS, the system could readily be expanded to analyse sensor-based network’s historical data of other areas of building performance, maintenance and safety.Originality/valueThis novel prototype has automated safety applications for FM during the asset lifecycle and maintenance phase of a building’s O&M phase of AM. Future work is proposed in several key areas, namely, develop instantaneous indicators of current safety performance within a building; and develop lead indicators of future safety performance of buildings.

Augmented Reality for Identifying Maintainability Concerns during Design

In a building context, decisions made early in the design phase can have a major impact on maintainability of the resulting facility. Effectively leveraging the knowledge of facility management teams in the design stage can lead to improved maintainability in the operation phase, but this feedback can be challenging to elicit during the design stage because facility management teams may not be formed by the time of design. This requires designers, who may not have facility management experience, to think like facility managers in order to consider the needs of the maintenance teams. This paper examines the extent to which different visualization media may be able to enable individuals without prior maintenance experience to identify maintainability concerns in a design model. Student participants, without prior maintenance experience, were randomly assigned to explore a design to assess maintainability concerns with either augmented reality (AR) or a traditional computer screen for viewing a Building Information Model (BIM). Their perceptions, behaviors, and statements were recorded and analyzed. Results indicate that BIM supports better identification of potentially problematic areas, but AR allows users to more consistently determine why an area is problematic. This suggests an opportunity to use a hybrid BIM/AR approach for identifying and resolving maintainability considerations during the design phase. The findings from this work provide evidence to illustrate how AR and BIM may enable individuals with limited experience to be able to effectively think like facility managers in order to make better maintainability decisions during design to lead to a better building during operation.

Early Contractor and Facility Management Team Involvement in the BIM Environment

Knowledge is the resource that contributes the most to an organisation’s competitiveness. Construction projects usually introduce project teams from different disciplines. Hence, knowledge in projects is complex and difficult to manage. To efficiently manage knowledge in projects, various strategies and tools have been applied over the years to support knowledge management (KM). Building information modelling (BIM) is a technology that has recently gained a lot of attention in the construction industry. The main feature of BIM is object-oriented and parametric modelling with the functions of dynamic visualisation, life cycle simulation, early analysis, coordination and collaborative working. Many studies have explored the functions of BIM mainly at the information level. However, only a few studies have considered the management of knowledge in a BIM environment. To fill this knowledge gap, this study explored the potential and expectation of a BIM-based system for early collaboration among contractor, facility management (FM) and design teams in the design stage. This study chose semi-structured interview as the main method to collect qualitative information. A total of 30 experts working in the construction industry were interviewed. On the basis of the analysis results of the collected information, a discussion was presented on how BIM can facilitate KM activities and relieve KM challenges. Therefore, the discussion focused on the requirements and expectations of the integrated KM system in a BIM environment that can facilitate the early involvement of construction contractors and the FM team into the design stage. This study also provides a new research direction for the transformation of research focus from BIM to building knowledge modelling. This paper is the revised version of the paper that has been published in the proceedings of the Creative Construction Conference 2018 (Wang et al., 2018).

Machine learning and BIM visualization for maintenance issue classification and enhanced data collection

Occupant-generated work orders are recognized as a good potential data to support Facility Management (FM) activities, however they are unstructured and rarely contain the specific information engineers require to resolve the reported issues. Instead, this often requires multiple trips are often needed to identify the required trade, identify the problem and required parts/tools, and resolve. A key challenge is data quality: free-form (unstructured) text is collected that frequently lacks necessary detail for problem diagnosis. Machine Learning provides new opportunities within the FM domain to improve the quality of information collected through online work order reporting systems by automatically classifying WOs and prompting building occupants with appropriate FM team-developed questions in real time to gather the required specific information in structured form. This paper presents the development, comparison, and application of two sets of supervised machine learning models to perform this classification for WOs generated from occupant complaints. A set of ∼150,000 historical WOs was used for model development and textual classification using with various term and itemset frequency approaches was tested. Classifier prediction accuracies ranged from 46.6% to 81.3% for classification by detailed subcategory; this increased to between 68% (simple term frequency) to 90% (random forest) when the dataset only included the ten most common (accounting for 70% of all WOs) subcategories. Hierarchical classification decreased performance. An FM-BIM integration approach is finally presented using the resultant classifiers to provide facilities management teams with spatio-temporal visualization of the work order categories across a series of buildings to help prioritize and streamline operations and maintenance task assignments.

Delivering and managing high productivity, low cost workplaces : A data driven perspective

After years of education from within and outside the real estate industry, executives recognise that the workplace is a tool they can deploy to enhance the performance of their people, attract and retain talent and impact their environmental footprint. At the same time, corporate real estate and facilities management (CRE&FM) teams are under pressure to save money. These emergent workplace expectations are often seen as conflicting with the goal to reduce operating costs. This paper explores the extent to which these expectations — implementing highspecification activity-based work settings and at the same time reducing costs — may in fact be the yin and yang of the workplace: perhaps, rather than being conflicting, they are in fact complementary. Through applied research and using data-driven approaches and models, it challenges some fundamental thinking about how a corporate real estate (CRE) organisation is structured; it considers how people’s behaviours influence their demands of the next generation workplaces; and it explores what this means for CRE operating models and the technology to support them.

Facilities Management Supply Chain: Functions, Flows and Relationships

Facilities Management (FM) is a dynamic profession, which supports core business functions by creating an effective and efficient built environment for clients, occupants and visitors, while maintaining interactions with parties such as FM consultants, in-house FM teams, contractors, suppliers and service providers. The diverse nature of FM functions necessitates effective supply chains. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the nature of FM supply chain along with upstream and downstream functions, various flows and different parties involved in FM supply chains. Data collection was limited to apparel sector. The study investigated the nature of FM supply chain with its activities, flows and parties involved in major FM functions such as maintenance, repair and refurbishment, energy and water management, building services and operations, health safety and hygiene and housekeeping. The research findings can be used as a guide by clients and FM teams for optimizing the performance of FM supply chain.

Co-creating digital services with and for facilities management

PurposeThis study aims to increase understanding about the co-creation of digital facilities management (FM) services with and for FM during a construction project.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reports a case study on the co-creation of a digital facilities management service during the Mission Bay medical center construction project for the University of California, San Francisco. The sub-contractors and the FM team co-created a quick-response (QR) code system for valves on the project. This digital service is now used by the FM team for training purposes and in emergency situations when information on valves and their service areas is quickly needed. Researchers made on-site observations, conducted 84 interviews and reviewed archival data in 2012, 2014 and 2016.FindingsThe findings show that a successful co-creation process consists of three elements: a dialogue between the project parties, the creation of shared context between the project parties and the creation of shared understanding about the FM’s needs and the service providers’ ways of satisfying those needs. The study describes ways to promote these elements.Originality/valuePrevious studies emphasize the need for digital FM but few explain how FM teams can be involved in creating digital services for them. This paper describes how to co-create digital FM services with and for FM in the context of a construction project.

Comparative building performance evaluation of a ‘sustainable’ community centre and a public library building

This paper uses a forensic building performance evaluation approach to undertake a comparative evaluation of the in-use energy and environmental performance data (collected over two years) of two civic buildings located in Southeast England – a small community centre (<1000 m2) and a medium-sized public library building (∼4500 m2), which are designed to high sustainability standards (EPC A rating) and low heating demand met by on-site low/zero carbon technologies. Although both buildings achieved measured air-permeability rates of ∼5 m3/h.m2, they encountered similar issues related to poor documentation of ‘as-built’ drawings, poor handover and guidance, problems with integrating and maintaining new technologies (heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar thermal), lack of calibration of sub-meters, and issues with automatic window controls. However, the actual annual energy use of the community centre is similar to the design prediction, while it is almost double the prediction in the case of the library building. This is because the community centre management team overcame some of the issues through their continuous engagement and interest in the building’s performance, whereas the management team of the Library building failed to engage with energy management, resulting in disuse of the biomass boiler and solar thermal system. Practical application: Comparative building performance evaluation (BPE) systematically reveals the similarities and differences in the actual energy and environmental performance of two ‘sustainable’ civic buildings. Careful management of heating and electricity loads, good occupant control over the indoor environment and high performance of low-carbon technologies in the Community Centre results in the building performing better than good practice benchmark. Regular changes in facility management (FM) staff result in inadequate energy management and control over heating, ventilation and lighting, that undermines occupant comfort and leads to excessive energy use in the library building. For civic buildings to perform as designed, it is vital that metering, sub-metering and controls are set up, commissioned and used properly by the FM team. Design teams should ensure that easy-to-understand user guides are made available before handover for FM and occupants.

Conceptualising the FinDD API plug-in: A study of BIM-FM integration

This research paper reports upon a client driven approach to iteratively develop the FinDD application programming interface (API) plug-in. FinDD integrates building information modelling (BIM) and facilities management (FM) via the novel development and application of totems. Totems visualise rich semantic FM data in a 3D object to extend the use and application of COBie thereby minimising costs incurred by the FM team to update and maintain the as-built BIM. Participatory action research was used to develop the proof of concept and involved a study of two multi-storey, mixed-use educational buildings (with a contract value worth ≥£150 million UK Sterling) located within Birmingham, UK. The lead researcher worked for the client's estates department and was instrumental in liaising with members of the project management team, synthesising their semantic data requirements and developing the FinDD API plug-in for Autodesk Revit. Research findings reveal that whilst FinDD was positively received as a bespoke extension of COBie (that was tailored to specifically meet client needs), further development is required to mitigate software inflexibility and augment automation of semantic data transfer, storage and analysis. Future work will validate the API plug-in via user experience and integrate additional databases such as post occupancy evaluations (POE).

Facilities management added value in closing the energy performance gap

Abstract Existing non-domestic buildings tend to use more energy than expected. This paper investigates how the operational strategies of facilities management can contribute to reducing building energy use. A longitudinal case study of a higher education (HE) campus which was conceptualised with the objective of being environmentally friendly and energy efficient is presented. The paper reflects on the energy performance of the campus since its operation in 2001, based on 14 years of energy data and a detailed record of all initiatives undertaken by the campus’s facilities management (FM) team in order to optimise energy performance. The integrated FM strategy composed of low- and no-cost strategies, continuous improvements, ongoing commissioning and retrofits succeeded in reducing campus energy intensity from 174 to 87 kWh/(m2*yr), now outperforming most relevant benchmarks. This finding highlights the importance of operations and maintenance in reducing the energy usage of existing buildings. This presented findings draw on a single case only, which excels through a very detailed longitudinal dataset. Going forwards, the analysis of further cases is recommended to corroborate the findings. The presented results suggest that proactive operations and maintenance strategies in existing buildings can contribute towards significantly improving energy performance. The profile and competency level of facilities management personnel should consequently be raised strategically at the organisational and national/industrial policy level, whilst integrated design processes should be further expanded to include FM’s operational control and management in a holistically fashion.

An Overview of Green Retrofitting Implementation in Non Residential Existing Buildings

Sustainability has been the latest value added service in the facility management field. However, the practice of sustainability in the facility management field is not well recognized and understood by the facility management team. As a result, building sector account to be the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions around the world. In fact, there is a strong business case for green building, yet green buildings represent the next phase of buildings. Since, the majority of the existing stock of buildings is not sustainably built and as it is not practically viable to demolish all the existing buildings, hence, one alternate solution is green retrofitting. However, the responses for green retrofitting are at very low rate. This paper reports the need to green retrofitting, reasons behind the limited number of green retrofitting implementation, and finally, a critical review of the existing body of knowledge on green retrofitting has been conducted. It is found that there has been no research conducted till to date on identifying the success factors for successful green retrofitting implementation.

An Alternate Reality Game for Facility Resilience (ARGFR)

Disasters are immense and shocking disturbances that necessitate the collective efforts of the entire community, not just who serve as emergency management officials, to respond and recover. For better preparation, sharing of resources, engaging the public can make a substantial contribution to these improved community outcomes of disaster resilience through sharing information, identifying problems, and crafting possible solutions collectively. This research develops a framework of a serious game, which is typically used for non-entertainment educational purposes, to harness crowd wisdom and to engage them in facility resilience management.This research first examines traditional methods used in emergency response training, as well as computer simulation-based emergency drills. It next reviews the use of gaming in emergency response training, from board games to computer games utilizing simulation technologies. It is found that alternate reality games, which are driven by transmedia storytelling and intensely devoted to establishing interactions across real and fictional worlds, suit the need of emergency response training best, yet is still lacking.The alternate reality game is designed to provide appropriate challenges that are realistic, and to enhance essential aspects of the player's experience. In the framework, the reality is integrated with virtual game design, and take places offline between play sessions with knowledgeable persons checking the appropriateness of the interface.The alternate reality game is expected to engage facility occupants and to address the need of facility resilience management. Facility management team and emergency management officials are able to gather real-time information about a facility and its occupants. The idea of alternate reality game also has the potential to be applied in other aspects of facility management to achieve a shift from centralized knowledge to a collaborative model that is more adaptive to dynamic situations of a facility.

Human resource capacity for information management in selected public healthcare facilities in Meru County, Kenya.

IntroductionReliable health information is essential for decision making in the healthcare system. Information management in Kenya was considered the weakest area under the Health Information System pillar mainly due to inadequate health workers capacity. The study therefore aimed at assessing health workers skills and current training needs for information management in the selected healthcare facilities.MethodsCross-section research design was adopted and both purposive sampling technique and censuses were used to establish the study participants. Analysis was done using SPSS version 20 and results were presented in tables, charts and graphs.ResultsIt was established that capacity building was usually undertaken through on-job trainings i.e. 85.1% (103) health workers had on-job training on filling of data collection tools and only 10% (13) had received formal classroom training on the same. Further, only 9.1% (11) health workers had received information management training while 90.9% (110) had not received such training. Health workers demonstrated below average skills on information management i.e. only 17.4% (21) could check for data accuracy, only 16.5% (20) could compute trends from bar charts and only 16.5% (20) could transform the data they collected into meaningful information for use.ConclusionThe researcher recommended that healthcare facilities management teams develop a competency based framework for defining the desired skill mix for information management and have a yearly Training Needs Assessment for assessing training needs for information management among the health workers.

Life Cycle Approach for Facility Resilience Information Modeling (FRIM)

Disasters have affected more than 3 billion people, killed over 750,000 people, and cost more than $600 billion over the past three years in the US. Research efforts have been made in the domain of community resilience attempting to mitigate disaster impacts at a community level. However, inadequate attention was drawn from researchers to the area of disaster resilience at a facility level. In fact, facility resilience plays a significant role because most of social activities take place in such built facilities.Facility spaces are dynamic in aspects of time and space for its users, including both facility occupants and its operation staffs. Extreme events also interrupt normal operations of a facility. In current practice, a comprehensive facilities information model is missing to monitor and predict the resilience capacity of a facility, and to coordinate disaster response and recovery during and after a crisis.In this research, the authors present the theoretical framework of facility resilience information modelling using a life cycle approach. An object-based data structure was designed and presented to integrate workspace representation into facilities management models, and a workspace identification and adjustment method was created to facilitate the modelling and planning of resilience operation spaces. This solves the current challenges in facility resilience including the delay in accessing facility information during disaster response, and extra losses of time and money caused by lack of accurate facility information from the available facility information systems. The final product, the Facility Resilience Information Model (FRIM), will improve facility resilience by providing the facility management team more approachable and accurate facility information, engaging facility occupants in crisis assessment and responding, and laying a foundation to achieve occupant-centered facility resilience management.