CHALLENGES OF MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT OF COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS IN NIGERIA: A CASE STUDY OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND NATIONAL INSURANCE TRUST PROPERTIES IN ENUGU

Thesis Overview

<p> <b>1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY&nbsp;</b></p><p>Within the past decade, the demand for office space has increased substantially throughout Enugu. Some of the reasons have been attributed to the influx of foreign investors and the oil production.&nbsp;</p><p>This has witnessed the development of high-rise commercial buildings mostly in the Central Business District, West Ridge, Airport City, Spintex Road, Achimota etc. (Broll Report, 2012). The total investment portfolio of Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) increased by 30.14 percent from 3,972.68 million in 2012 to 5,170.13. Its real return on investment was 16.90 percent in 2013 compared to 10.67 percent 2012 (SSNIT annual report, 2013). The information above, clearly indicates that the commercial building industry in Nigeria is growing in investment and the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) plays a major role either in ownership or partnership (Broll Nigeria Report, 2015).&nbsp;</p><p> However, to achieve excellent performance and yield maximum value on investment of commercial buildings, it requires proper maintenance management (Emma and Syahrul, 2009). BS (2001) defines maintenance to be “the combination of all technical, administrative and managerial actions during the life cycle of an item intended to retain it in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform the required function”. Maintenance management refers to how well a building is maintained (Yahya and Ibrahim, 2011). Building maintenance management is an action which involves interacting or blend of technical, social, legal and economic elements that governs and manage the use of buildings (Francis et al., 2001). <br></p><p> Commercial buildings are relatively complicated in maintenance management and carrying out maintenance on these facilities comes with serious problems and challenges such as high cost of maintenance, adequate maintenance policy framework, minimal or lack of input of experts of facilities managers during the design stages, etc (Timilli 2014; Omotehinshe et al., 2015). According to Shabha (2003), lack of proper building maintenance policies and strategies, budget, skills, and technology will lead to potential risks challenged during the maintenance stages of the building. The purpose of this research study is to look at the challenges of maintenance management with the view of recommending strategies for improving maintenance management of SSNIT commercial buildings in Enugu. <br></p><p> <b>1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM&nbsp;</b></p><p>Commercial building maintenance cannot be undisputable undertaken without challenges (Timilli 2014; Omotehinshe et al., 2015). One of the major challenges that confronts commercial building maintenance is the lack of consideration and poor integration of maintenance policy framework in the widest possible context and deviation from proper procedural system (Timilli 2014; Forster 2009). Most of the recent maintenance policy procedures do not clearly link maintenance needs with building performance with respect to the building users who measure the performance of a building with various criteria which include the condition of the building (Yahya and Ibrahim, 2011). According to Ali et al. (2010), for an effective maintenance management, it requires an appropriate maintenance policy framework. <br></p><p> Building maintenance is also challenged with high cost of maintenance. According to El-Haram and Horner (2002), there are numerous factors that are responsible for the high housing maintenance cost such as building characteristics, human aspects, ways of implementing maintenance and government policies. Al-khatam (2003) identified and grouped some of the factors into seven (7) categories which include engineering services, labour, building materials, environments, management and administration, budget and finance and building users. This was confirmed by Ali et al. (2010) who found out that factors such as building materials, building services, building age, expectation of tenants, failure to execute maintenance at the right time, maintenance factors, political, outstanding maintenance charges, over budgeting and other factors contribute immensely to high cost of maintenance. Other risk factors contributing to high cost of maintenance as a result of financial losses include poor design and construction practices, poor accessibility for maintenance, poor selection of materials, incompatibility poor specifications, non-availability of spare parts, lack of standard tools and instruments for regular maintenance and environmental conditions (De Silva et al. 2012). <br></p><p> Another challenge of building maintenance is the minimal consideration or lack of input from expertise of facilities managers who takes oversight responsibility of maintenance management in the early design stages. Most of the challenges of building maintenance can be minimised if not avoided if the opinions or inputs of facilities management professionals are fully engaged on maintenance management techniques and operations for consideration during the early design stages (Williamson et al., 2010). Also relevant information provided by facilities managers to designers minimise design errors that leads to unsatisfactory results during facilities maintenance operations phase (Jawdeh et al., 2010). It is necessary to adopt maintenance input in the design stages to ensure that opinions can be used as reference for ease of maintenance in the future in order to reduce design defect which poses challenges for maintenance (Ali et al., 2013). According to Omotechinshe et al., (2015), maintenance aspect are scarcely considered in most design processes and maintenance professionals are rarely invited into the design teams, this often times raises or leads to maintenance problems which badly affect the performance of such buildings. On the basis of the above research findings, this study focus on the challenges of maintenance management of SSNIT commercial buildings in Enugu. <br></p><p> <b>1.3 RESEARCH QUESTION</b>&nbsp;</p><p>The following research question will be tested for acceptance or rejection:&nbsp;</p><p>i. What are the policy frameworks used on SSNIT commercial buildings?&nbsp;</p><p>ii. What are the factors that contribute to high cost of maintenance of SSNIT commercial buildings?</p><p>&nbsp;iii. What are the inputs of facilities/maintenance managers in the design and construction stages of SSNIT commercial buildings?&nbsp;</p><p><b>1.4 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY</b>&nbsp;</p><p>The aim of the study is to identify challenges of maintenance management of SSNIT commercial buildings in Enugu and the objectives are:</p><p>&nbsp;i. To assess the policy framework of maintenance of SSNIT commercial buildings in Enugu.&nbsp;</p><p>ii. To identify the factors that contribute to high cost of maintenance of SSNIT commercial buildings.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br></p>