Keywords: quality, data acquisition, asset management, life cycle costs.

There is an emerging trend in asset management, which places more emphasis on the rehabilitation and maintenance of existing infrastructure rather than the creation of new infrastructure. In Canada there are estimates that infrastructure has used up almost 80% of its life expectancy, on average, and that C$60 billion is required to repair and prolong the life of existing infrastructure.

Prolonging the life of infrastructure puts a greater emphasis on quality control and assurance in asset management. When considering the life cycle costs of facilities, the maintenance, operating and rehabilitation costs are considerably more than the construction costs [1,2]. The major problem with this type of cost analysis is that there has been very little data recorded on life cycle costs of facilities. A major impediment in linking quality to life expectancy and life cycle costs is therefore this deficiency in data acquisition. In addition, a dichotomy exists in the meaning of quality. The everyday meaning of quality, with connotations of excellence, is not used in asset management. Instead the meaning generally is described as conformance to specified requirements in the construction stage, and satisfaction of users and owners in the operating and maintenance stage.

Systems need to be developed which provide processes, procedures and an organizational structure to acquire data so that future databases will provide benchmarking to link life cycle costs with quality asset management.

An asset management programme must establish the scope, objectives and goals to devise a plan that will measure the quality of facilities and their components in order to acquire a database for benchmarking. This would then overcome the dearth of information in quality measurement for good asset management.

An asset manager needs to consider the whole life costs of a facility. These costs include design, construction, operating, maintenance and rehabilitation costs, and may also include interest, land acquisition, and demolition costs. The levels and frequency of maintenance are important to whole life costs and prolonging the life of a facility. The asset manager knows instinctively that money well spent on design and construction will minimize operating and maintenance costs. A quality operating and maintenance programme will ensure a good performance and an extended life of a facility. A condition index report on the facility shows asset managers where money must be spent immediately. It also provides sound data describing the condition of the components of a facility in order to create more accurate benchmarks and a logical direction for future investment strategies.

A research program conducted by the Construction Engineering Group at the University of New Brunswick investigated the contrasting operating and maintenance approaches of roofing assets of two public sector organizations. The study was part of a larger National Building Envelope Life Cycle Asset Management (BELCAM) project.

Roof maintenance management systems (RMMS) were studied for two public sector organizations to determine whether or not the quality of an Operations and Maintenance programme has an effect on the actual condition of the organization's roofing systems. The study focused solely on flat and low-slope roofs.

Visual inspections were conducted on the flat to low-slope roofs of both organizations and a roof condition index (RCI) was computed using a computerized maintenance management system called MicroROOFER (USACERL, 1995). The roof condition index is a number from 0 - 100 where "0" indicates a failed roof and "100" represents a roof with no distresses or defects.

The first organization investigated was the University of New Brunswick (UNB). UNB has 35 buildings, totalling 150 flat and low-slope roof sections on its Fredericton campus encompassing over 39 000 m² of roof area. In this case, a roof maintenance management system is not currently utilized although, to some extent, some of the principles in such a system are used.

The second organization investigated was the Combat Training Centre Gagetown, located in Oromocto, New Brunswick. This facility has a flat and low-slope roof inventory of 156 buildings, covering over 133 000 m² of roof area. In this study, 101 roof sections on 15 buildings were investigated, totalling over 47 000 m² of roof area. A RMMS is fully utilized at this location.

MicroROOFER is a computerized maintenance management system. It is a decision support tool which provides systematic and consistent methods of assessing the roof condition, the selection of repair and replacement requirements, and prioritizing work based on maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. It provides a windows based system for data entry.

1

J. Christian, L. Newton, and T. Gamblin, "Developing Tools for a Management System to Improve the Quality of a Facility", CIB W79 International Conference on Quality and Safety on Construction Sites, San Paulo, Brazil, CD-Rom, 2003.

2

J. Christian, L. Newton, and T. Gamblin, "A Comparison of the Roof Maintenance Management Systems of Two Public Sector Organizations", Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers, Montreal, Canada, CD-Rom, 2002.

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