Maintainability: a best-practice approach to building design

The development of varying unconventional low carbon and low energy technologies to meet current demands for sustainable solutions and to make our ‘buildings feel good’ call for good consideration to the maintenance of these buildings and the fitted technologies from design inception. It is more so when we realise that building elements, components and materials are also exposed to the fast changing environmental vagaries which cause wear and tear and ageing. Maintainability is a design characteristic which incorporates function, accessibility, reliability, and ease of servicing and repairs into all active and passive system components, that maximizes costs and benefits of expected life-cycle value of a facility”. This paper therefore looks at maintainability design approach as a best-practice approach to low carbon, green and sustainable building designs. It draws data from a research conducted by the authors to explore a best practice approach to operability and maintainability of low carbon buildings (LCBs) in the UK. A mixed method research approach involving across-method and within-method triangulation (interviews, surveys and case studies) were adopted. The study concluded that building designers need to prove the maintainability and operability of their designs before they are constructed, and in so doing will give due attention to how the facilities would be maintained, when they are designing.