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Purpose The largest share of a building maintenance budget goes towards preventing or repairing building defects. Also, building defects shorten a building’s lifetime, impact the user’s safety and health, prevent the buildings from performing their functions well and repairing building defects generates waste. Therefore, this study aims to specify the factors that affecting the number of building defects and how to reduce their negative impacts. Design/methodology/approach A case study was used as a research strategy and convergent parallel mixed methods were used as research design. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected concurrently, followed by independent analyses of the quantitative and qualitative data, and then merged the two sets of results according to the procedure of using the convergent parallel design. Descriptive statistics analysed quantitative data, whilst qualitative data was analysed by the content analysis technique. Findings The findings of this study explored the factors that affect the number of defects in buildings, the significant factors were related to the building’s life cycle in terms of design, construction, operation and maintenance phase; relevant attributes were construction teams, building users and maintenance teams. The study also addressed the approaches to minimise the negative impacts of those factors. Their negative impacts mainly contributed to increased building defects that increase maintenance costs, affect users’ safety and health, reduce buildings’ lifespan and cause environmental impact due to resource extraction. Originality/value The existing studies have not adequately addressed the significant factors that affect the number of building defects. Also, emerging technologies and environmental sustainability considerations related to building defects have not been linked in previous related work. Therefore, the present study has contributed to filling this gap.

PurposeIn recent years, there have been many concerns about issues surrounding building maintenance, which are continually increasing. However, there is a lack of comprehensive studies on building maintenance issues, their effects and the way forward. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a comprehensive review of building maintenance issues, their effects and the way forward. It also aims to develop a conceptual model that can support future research.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review of the literature published from 2009 to 2019 was carried out. Five relevant databases were searched, based on this study's search terms, and a narrative synthesis of the results from the included studies was carried out. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they fulfilled the inclusion criteria of this systematic review.FindingsThis study has identified and classified building maintenance issues, their effects and the way forward, and also developed a conceptual model that demonstrates the association between issues, their effects and the way forward. The way forward of the conceptual model focuses on effective management, technical capability, development of human resources and cost optimisation.Originality/valueThis paper addresses an important topic: the aspect in which it differs from existing studies is that, in the latter, the researchers studied a single sub-issue, whereas this systematic review includes a comprehensive study of building maintenance issues. Furthermore, this review has demonstrated how the way forward can moderate issues and their effects.

Buildings have been consistently identified as the sector with the greatest potential to reduce both energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through more sustainable and effective strategies of building maintenance, along with enhancing user behaviour. While ineffective building maintenance practices have environmental, economic and social consequences, according to evidence from the literature, there has been a lack of studies that offer strategic approaches for sustainable and effective building maintenance practices. The significance of these strategic approaches comes from the fact that building maintenance practices are still based on unsatisfactory actions in many countries around the world. Thus, studies that provide such approaches could contribute to improvements globally and help reduce the impact of these practices, while also pointing stakeholders involved in the right direction. Consequently, an in-depth semi-structured interview was developed and conducted based on the current issues and needs, as well as the latest trends in the challenges, in building maintenance, supported by an extensive review of the recent literature. This study introduces seven strategies that will positively improve maintenance work procedures within the domain of sustainability practices and allow for a more effective allocation of resources, capabilities and time. The adoption of these strategies by stakeholders in maintenance-managed buildings will significantly overcome both the current issues and future challenges in achieving sustainable and effective building maintenance practices, which will benefit the environmental, economic and social dimensions.

Currently, significant and continuous attention is given by governments, policymakers, local authorities, users and researchers to the ambiguous standing behind the low performance of implemented maintenance in buildings. In an attempt to understand this problem, a hypothetical structural model was developed to evaluate the factors affecting building maintenance success. By employing a structural equation modelling technique, the model adapts a total of 34 attributes across six confirmatory factors, namely, organisational-related factor (ORF), human resources-related factor (HRRF), technical-related factor (TRF), financial-related factor (FRF), building user-related factor (BURF) and overall building maintenance success (OBMS). Based on the survey data collected from a case study in Malaysia, the model results assessed the impacts of the factors above on the OBMS. With a clear understanding of the significance of these factors in the context of maintenance success, these outcomes could help develop the procedures of the maintenance organisation to enhance existing building maintenance practices towards their successful implementation. The theoretical and practical contributions, the limitations of the present study and the future paths for research have been addressed.

The frequency of floods increases annually in many countries of the world due to climate change. Flood is typically coupled to flowing water moving faster than normal. Thus, understanding the drag force behaviour due to the flowing water on concrete blocks is essential to predict floods risks since the concrete is the predominant material used in the construction of buildings, bridges, dams, canals and other infrastructure over the world. Nonetheless, previous studies were mostly focused on the resistance of concrete structure due to the load force, and there is a lack of studies about the resistance of concrete structure due to the drag force of flowing water. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the drag force of flowing water, which causes the displacement of concrete blocks. Also, to investigate the effects of concrete mass and flow velocity on the drag force. Three concrete cubes were used with dimensions 0.15 m 0.15 m 0.15 m and weighing between 6.486 kg to 7.847 kg. The concrete cube is installed in the middle of the open channel 10-m long, 0.3 m wide and 0.46 m depth Armfield S6 MKII flume. In this study, the flowing water exerts force on the cube concrete block in the direction of flow, known as the drag force. It was observed the mass of the block is an essential factor that affects the drag force on a concrete cube due to the flowing water. Therefore, each cube of concrete block with area 0.02235 (m2) and mass between 6.486 kg to 7.874 kg to be displaced was needed a drag force of flowing water between 2.737 N to 3.732 N. Also, it has been found that the drag force increases with the increasing the flow velocity.

Peat soil is very compressible, which leads to an excessive settlement. Stabilization of peat soil is the way to improve the engineering properties of peat soil through mixing peat with supplementary cementation materials. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the stabilization of peat soil using fly ash, bottom ash and ordinary Portland cement (OPC) to improve the engineering properties of peat soil. Also to examine the possibility of fly ash and bottom ash waste reduction through using them as a binder of the mixture in soil improvement application. In this study, fly ash and bottom ash were collected from generation wastes at coal- fired electric power and stabilization of peat soil was done by mixing peat soil with fly ash, bottom ash and OPC. Unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and Fourier transform scanning electron microscope (FESEM) was conducted before and after the stabilization of peat soil. Also, some essential physicochemical properties of a mixture have identified before the mixing process. The findings of the compressive strength of peat soil were equal to 5 kPa at its natural state and after stabilization strength of peat soil was equal to 47 kPa. FESEM micrographs have shown ultrastructure of peat stabilization appears as inherent and coherent while the ultrastructure of original peat appears as incoherent and sporadic. The findings have revealed the effectiveness of fly ash and bottom ash to improve the strength of peat and the applicability of the utilization of coal ash waste as binder materials.