Comprehensive Study of Factors Governing Maintenance Operations for Public Office Buildings.

Successful adoption of the principles for establishing building maintenance procedures still remains partial, particularly in developing countries. Well-known obstacles, such as a lack of methodology and planning, knowledge of staff and quality required, and budget limitations, may all outweigh any practical information and guides to efficiently achieving maintenance objectives for existing buildings. Given that, in Iraq, public office buildings are one of the largest parts of the buildings construction sector, and that Iraq is considered to have one of the largest rates of maintenance work expenditure, significant investigation is needed. However, research related to Iraqi maintenance operations is limited to a few, general aspect overviews of some elements of maintenance. These require amalgamation to overcome all maintenance issues and establish a future strategy for efficient maintenance operations. This paper presents a detailed review and quantitative investigation of the barriers, success factors, and key drivers regarding effective building maintenance practice in Iraq. Based on feedback from 72 specialist stakeholder respondents and interviews with experts at different levels, it can be said that building maintenance procedures in this study area are still in their infancy. In order to reinforce building maintenance as a robust and unified practice, the goal should be to formulate a comprehensive plan earlier in the building process, based on the drivers that have been identified and on the deep knowledge stakeholders possess about successful building maintenance procedures. The study concludes that budgets for building maintenance operations should be aligned with expected building deficiencies during their operating phase and with building standards quality, and that the failure of such estimations can render maintenance operations inefficient. Thus, the findings can provide a best practice guide to aid future researchers in managing maintenance operations within a framework based on investigated factors that guarantees long-term benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]