Maintaining Technical Building Facilities: A Growing Challenge

To define a resilient maintenance budget, facility managers need to possess a profound knowledge of legal requirements and technical standards, as well as relevant economic influences involved in the maintenance of technical building facilities. TheGerman working group for machine and electrical technology in state and municipal organisations (AMEV), therefore, initiated a state-funded quantitative research project based on the empirical data of 140 federal buildings to gain more knowledge about influences, interdependencies and economic figures on the maintenance of technical building equipment, as well as recommendations on servicing and inspection intervals according to the German standards. The major goal was to complete a scientifically sound analysis and evaluation of the key influencing factors to improve the accuracy and reliability of future budget calculations over the long term. To do so, it was possible to develop an empirical database volume of almost 10,000 datasets for maintenance as a basis of investigation. Based on the dataset, numerous correlation and cluster analysis were conducted to identify relevant influencing factors, such as the "age of the facility", the "building height" or the "type of use". As a result, these influences will be incorporated in the future calculation procedure by weighted correcting factors.