Significant factors influencing operational and maintenance (o&m) costs of commercial buildings

Abstract

Usually, the costs incurred during the operational phase of a building are much greater than the initial construction cost. Amongst, the running cost of a typical commercial building varies between 70-80% of its total LCC depending on its determinants. However, the significance of those determinants could vary with building function, characteristics of location and economy where it is based. This paper, therefore, investigates the significance of factors influencing the running cost of commercial buildings in Sri Lanka. A questionnaire survey administered to a sample of 125 industry professionals who have more than 10 years of experience in building O&M indicates that O&M costs of a commercial building are influenced by 08 major determinants including building characteristics (BC), maintenance factors (MTF), managerial factors (MNF), environmental factors (EF), political factors (PF), tenant factors (TF), design and & construction defects (DCD), and social factors (SF). The relative significance index (RSI) analysis performed ranked EF as the top determinant influencing both operations and maintenance costs of commercial buildings with an RSI of 0.963 and 0.996 respectively. Further, all the respondents are of the view that building function, occupancy, and building services have a highly significant influence on operations costs whereas natural deterioration, failure to identify the true cause of defect, lack of preventive maintenance, and budget constraints are foremost factors influencing the maintenance costs. The impact of most of the sub-factors except very few namely, building function, age, and location on O&M costs can be controlled up to a greater extent. Thus, early consideration of these factors during the building design and construction will result in reduction of unnecessary costs to be incurred during the operational phase of a building.