Strategies for the Maintenance Management of Hostel Buildings in Nigeria (Published)
A directive was given in 2004 by the Federal Ministry of Education that federally-owned tertiary institutions should hands off hostel management. Consequent on the directive, Nigerian tertiary institutions now have both institutional and non-institutional hostels serving tertiary institutions. This no doubt has a lot of implications on the nature of management and maintenance of hostels in Nigeria.This paper assessed maintenance management strategies adopted in the maintenance of hostel buildings in Nigeria and formulated guidelines for the maintenance of the hostels using the field data collected from the Federal Polytechnic Oko for the case-study. In order to achieve the objective of the study, opinions of hostellers, school management, maintenance heads and private developers were sampled through structured questionnaires. The data collected were quantitatively analysed and the result of the analysis indicated the following as the problems of maintenance; non-availability of funds, indiscipline and lack of functional operational frame work and regulatory body, climatic conditions, lack of good maintenance culture, lack of skilled maintenance personnel, use of foreign building materials and unethical behaviours as some of the key factors responsible for poor maintenance work and management of hostels in tertiary institutions. Effective strategies that should include a stipulated guide overseen by a body of professionals to enforce maintenance in hostels to avoid complacency, the adoption of a maintenance manual to be strictly monitored and the use of a computerised management system that will ensure proper maintenance records were recommended.
Keywords: Maintenance Management, Nigeria, Strategies., Tertiary Institutions, computerised maintenance management system, hostel buildings
Post-Occupancy Evaluation Tools for Effective Maintenance Management of Public Schools (Published)
Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) involves the systematic assessment of buildings, facilities and surroundings occupied by end-users.This paper examines the POE tools for effective maintenance management of Public School Buildings. In this study, questionnaires were administered and retrieved from the 331 end-users that is staff and Parents of pupils of the Rivers State Model Primary Schools from 12 selected schools in 6 Local Government Areas out of the 138 completed functional schools. Purposive sampling technique was adopted to select the 12 schools. The descriptive statistical tools such as table, frequency, percentage and relative importance index (RII) were employed in analyzing the data collected. The findings showed that POE tools for effective maintenance management are both quantitative and qualitative methods and the tools include questionnaire, walkthrough observation, photographs, interviews, focus group and survey as the most valuable tools. POE tools are vital effective maintenance management tools employed as feedbacks from end-users for effective integration towards sustainable maintenance. The study therefore recommends POE tools for effective maintenance management of Public Schools in Nigeria
Keywords: Building Performance, End-users, Maintenance Management, Methods and Tools, Post Occupancy Evaluation