Development of building maintenance communication effectiveness model for high rise building maintenance management in Malaysia

Abstract

Practicing building maintenance management in the high-rise commercial buildings are made up of complex communication activities involving many parties. Previous studies reveal that the communication gaps have existed between maintenance management group and building occupant group. The problems identified are related to the complex building maintenance process often involve interests-competing and tasks interrelated organizations. It has therefore become an ineffective communication system among building maintenance stakeholders for supporting value aspect in the building particularly on the operation and maintenance activities. The aim of the research is to investigate the communication factors impact on building maintenance communication performance in building maintenance management practice of high-rise commercial buildings. Thus, the research focused on building maintenance communication which is the transmission and exchange of related information. In this study, a model was developed to show the reality of the relationship between the communication factors and the communication performance indicators. A framework of these factors for managing communication system has been built up from both theoretical and practical points of view in this study. It sets out the relationships between the determining variables of communication factors and influenced variables of communication performance indicators. Based on this model, questionnaire survey was designed to investigate the impacts of communication factors on building maintenance communication performance. One hundred and ten (110) high-rise commercial buildings in Kuala Lumpur and thirty-nine (39) high-rise commercial buildings in Selangor which are two (2) interesting locations for local and international investors in Malaysia have been selected for the study which involving two (2) groups of respondents called as building maintenance stakeholders. The in-house building maintenance personnel (IH) and outsourced team (OS) are in maintenance management group whereas the building owners (BO) and tenants (T) as the building occupant group have been structured interviewed based on the value aspects of communication factors. The testified statistical analysis indicates that, only eight (8) factors of schedule for communication and information distribution, social and informal mechanisms for a cooperative working environment, arrangement of building maintenance management structure, building maintenance information with high quality content, building maintenance stakeholders’ experiences, capable building manager, building maintenance information documentation, and building maintenance communication media infrastructure discovered their impacts on the building maintenance communication performance which had a significant relationship with building maintenance communication effectiveness (BMCE). So, it can help maintenance management team to develop strategies for improving communication effectiveness during the operation and maintenance activities by applying needed actions to the related predicting communication performance indicators. In conclusion, effectively managing communication factors through communication performance indicators in building maintenance practice can improve the building maintenance management performance and further benefit for all building maintenance stakeholders and the objectives of the whole operation and building maintenance activities.