Effect of faulty design and construction on building maintenance (case study of afdin and mother cat construction companies in kaduna state)

Thesis Overview

<p> 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study<br>‘To fail to plan is to plan to fail.’— (Wood, 2003) The essence of all result-oriented work may be identified in this quotation. In the context of design one can adapt this phrase to, ‘if a designer fails to plan well the plan will turn out badly’. In understanding this phrase one can use a law of physics as a metaphor. Newton’s third law of force is ‘For every action there is a reaction’. For designers this law could be interpreted as ‘for every design decision/consideration (action) there is a consequence (reaction)’. As such this research tries to explore the actions of design and the consequence of their actions.<br>The relationship between design, construction and maintenance is closely related but not easily distinguished. (Maisarah, 2012) explained the vital role of design in the early stage of project management. They stated that a functional design can promote skill; economy, conveniences, and comforts while a non-functional design can impeded activities of all types of detract from quality of care, and raise cost to intolerable levels. A typical saying by Vonnegut: everybody want to build and nobody want to do maintenance. In Nigeria building design are copied from other countries without considering the conditions that lead to such design, hence maintenance experts are seldom included to advice on maintenance efficiency of such design. In a related development (Iyagba, 2005) reveal that there are substantial numbers of people who do not know the meaning of maintenance. The mistakes most designer made is believing that a building that is design with the best aesthetics materials requires little or no maintenance, but such notion or argument are wrong because The<br>2<br>maint enance of a building begins after the construction is completed (Haniff, 2007). (Eizzatul, 2012) observed that the maintainability aspect at the design stage is often ignored and this has contributed to future problems when implementing maintenance work. He further explained that this happens when the aesthetics value has become more important in the design of asset, besides the design factor, site selection, apparatus, tools or facilities to maintain the asset are hard to obtain or very costly. According to (Rozita, 2006) the effectiveness of the building is not dependent on its aesthetic value but on the ability to perform maintenance works on the building in the future. Just like the military slogan that if you fail to plan, and then you are planning to fail. That is, if a building is design and constructed without any plan for maintenance the building is hovering towards failure. According (Norhanizaetal, 2007) if the designer failed to plan well the entire plan would also fail. Every decision made during the building design and construction has its own impact, too often the professionals that constructs and design don‘t worry whether the building they design and build will work properly, their major concern is just to complete the project and move to the next job while the consequence is left for the client to handle. The effect of faulty building design and construction has become one of the major issues in maintaining building in Nigeria. Nigeria has a population estimated to be around 150 million which has the largest black populace in the world and as such new building are being built daily to accommodate the demands of the teeming population, this has lead to the desperation of every single individual to have a building of his own , the consequence is that an inexperience designer is given a contract to design and same to another to construct in a short period of time which will result in many defects especially during the design and construction stage and this will inevitably result in high maintenance cost. (Abdulmohsen and sadi, 1997) stated that the increase in<br>3<br>maintenance cost is attributed to the failure of the building design. If we compare the production of as cars, for example a car is designed and then built; it is tested exhaustively, fault identified and then rectified. If we relate this to building work, we need to construct a building, test if overtime and then demolish and rebuild, removing all problem in the next design. Faulty construction also accounts for many building failure, if a new copied design has not been specified or built previously(most especially designed copied from abroad) the builder will have no experience of this design and may build it incorrectly resulting in high cost of maintenance with inherent defects. It is therefore sacrosanct for both the designer and the builder to consider the importance of maintenance at the onset of the design because decision made at the planning stage have a large effect on the maintenance of the building and the cost. It is most times worry some that most building expert that suppose to educate the public on the importance of building maintenance will say age building result in high cost of maintenance.<br>To avoid the implication of design faults on the need for future maintenance, constant research and close observation of existing methods of design and construction practice are needed. In addition, it requires more international forums to address and exchange the issues and experiences seen in different parts of world. In Singapore, an analysis of defects in wet areas of buildings by (Chew, 2005) reported faults in design, the construction phase and material selection. The main sources of defects were the mistakes made at the design stage, construction phase, maintenance practice and in materials selection. The defects that resulted from these failures included tile debonding, mastic failure, the staining of tiles, cracking, water leakage through cracks, water leakage where pipes passed through walls, paint defects, water ponding, spalling of concrete and unevenness of tile surface and poor pointing. This long list of<br>4<br>defects is only those found in the wet areas of buildings which constitute only a small part of the total building. This alarming amount of design faults also creates an opportunity for similar research in other parts of the building as well. 1.2 Statement of Problem Nigerian is a rich developing country with huge capital resources. It is developing very fast in every area including building construction. Public and private sectors have initiated the need for large and complex construction projects. Meeting the high demand of both parties in a short time, it is expected that many errors and defects have concerned during the design and construction stages which will result later in high maintenance costs and breakdown of structural component. Despite the various strategies being adopted by the government for the maintenance of those facilities, the buildings remain a home for defects that should have been avoided if proper feasibility planning on maintenance has been given cognizance right from the design and construction stage of the project. This has led to unnecessary expenditure from the various authorities in carrying out remedial work to curb the effects. (Brennan, 2000) opined that the main purpose of maintenance of property is essentially to retain it values for investment, aesthetics, safety and durability with a view to ensuring that the property is continually used for habitation and to satisfaction of the owner. It was even observed that majority of the new construction were being built up with defects which later transpire into substantial expenses on maintenance. 1.3 The Present Work<br>This present research is concerned with the investigation of the effects of faulty design and construction on Building maintenance. Questionnaires were used to collect data from designers and Builders. The predominant severity effects of each defects was assess and rank based on the severity index as ranked by both the Builders and<br>5<br>the designer using SPSS 20. This was used to determine whether there is a correlation between designer and construction professionals. 1.4 Aim and Objectives The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of faulty design and construction on Building maintenances. The specific objectives of this research are:<br>i. To identify the building defects caused by faulty design and construction on building maintenance<br>ii. To determine the severity index of all defects identified and classify them by severity using SPSS 20.<br>iii. To determine the severity index for each defect within the group and classify them by severity using SPSS 20.<br>iv. To assess the effects of the building defects caused by faulty design and construction on maintenance.<br>v. To test the hypothesis that architects and builders generally agree on the severity ranks of the faulty defects<br>1.5 Scope and Limitation The scope of this research is restricted to engineering and architectural buildings and the defect associated with this building was examines at the design and construction stage. Afdin Construction Company and Mother Cat Construction Company was used investigated to illustrate the problem related in this study.<br>6<br>1.6 Significance of the Study Previous research has shown that the cost of maintaining a building usually involve large amount of expenditure which most times surpass the cost of building structure itself. Therefore, design and construction play a vital role in deciding if defect will transpire later in the building. Hence, by getting it right from the onset of the building can go a long way in minimizing mistakes and error that might occur during construction.<br>7 <br></p>