Generic Method of Grading Building Defects Using FMECA to Improve Maintainability Decisions

To improve building maintainability by preventing defects, a scientific maintainability scoring system necessitates a centralized database of defects and their systematic analysis or grading. Unlike causes, impacts of defects are not well defined. This research establishes bottom-up, qualitative failure mode effect and criticality analysis (FMECA) as a suitable defect grading tool and develops criticality parameters applicable for buildings. For two major systems, nine subsystems, and 62 components of Singapore commercial buildings, 319 defects were identified. Thirty-four experienced facility managers graded 45% of them as critical in a five-point Likert scale during a face-to-face questionnaire. Most critical defects were from five mechanical-electrical subsystems, namely, sanitary plumbing, HVAC, elevator, electrical, and fire protection. They are rare but significantly affect users and system performance. Though four civil-architectural subsystems were simpler, their defects showed higher frequency an...

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