Maintenance practices Public Hospital Building

Maintenance practices Public Hospital Building

Maintenance practices – BS 3811, defines maintenance practices as a strategy within which decisions on maintenance are taken, alternatively, it may be defined as the ground rules for the allocation of resources (men, material and money) between the alternative types of maintenance actions that are available to management.

In order to make a rational allocation of resources the benefits of those actions to the organization as a whole must be identified and related to the cost involved. issues under consideration in a practice.

Physical causes of poor maintenance in public hospital building

The physical causes of maintenance problem refer to all the natural/physical factors that negatively affect the durability of the building. The durability of a built facility is a measure, in an inverse sense, of the rate of deterioration of a material or component (S. Afranie and Osei – Tutu, E 1999). According to Cobbinah, 2010. the British standard institution (BSI). Code of practice defines durability as the quality of maintaining as satisfactory appearance and performance of required functions. The code measures this parameter in terms of the minimum number of years of satisfactory life. The three major causes of deterioration and hence maintenance problems are, age or period of construction environmental and location factor.

The location of hospital building has a direct effect on the maintenance problem. The location refers to the exact Loci of the building.

Thus location is influenced by the terrain of the environment, soil, nature of social and seismic movement, slat Laden winds and salty water effects as well as high temperatures and drastic temperature changes.

The public hospital building maintenance department

The public hospital building maintenance department is managed by maintenance manager. The maintenance manager is responsible for the planning and control of maintenance operations. In a small firm, the functions may be undertaken by a member of staff in addition to his other duties, while in a larger form there would be a separate group of people solely responsible for maintenance.

The functions of the maintenance department

the maintenance department among other things performs the following basic functions.

1. Advisory function: This involves liaison with occupants and users and consultation with upper management on such matters as:

i. The standards to be maintained and the effect on user activities of deviations from these standards.

ii. The relative merits of alternative maintenance practice and the extent to which it would be advantageous to employ operatives directly for executing the work.

iii. Clarification of any constraints in relations to limits of expenditure, desirable cash flow patterns, acceptable delay times or restrictions on time and method of carrying out work.

iv. Estimates of maintenance expenditure both long and short term, including where appropriate, the cost of initially bringing up to the require standard and the possibility of phasing any such backlog over a period of years.

v. Provision of cost and other data to assist upper management in deciding whether to repair or renew.

vi. Technical requirement for minor works involving alterations or small additions to the buildings although not strictly maintenance it is usual for the maintenance organization to assume full responsibility fir this types of work.

vii. Advice on the maintenance implications of designs for proposed new buildings.

(2) Organizational function: – this nay be in relation to the central administrative and supervisory system or to the execution system whether by direct labour or contract.

(3) control functions:- the control functions are dependent on the timely receipt of accurate information relating to the state of the system, the control functions operate in the following areas.

(i) Work input, identifying the extent of work necessary to achieve the required standards within the constraints laid down. The process involved would include planned inspections, appraisal of user request and assignment of priorities

(ii) Time of execution. Programming the workload so that the carrying out of the work is timed in accordance with the needs of the user and the available labour force.

(iii) Quality-supervision of work during execution and by subsequent control inspections to detect latent defects.
(iv) Cost budgetary control system including estimating resource requirements in cost and performance terms for later comparison with actual cost and performance achieved.
(v) Feedback:– this is an inherent feature of all the control functions and involves keeping such records as are necessary for the proper control of the operations.

(4) Building maintenance depends on the materials used in the construction of the building and the types of building. Buildings however, can be categorised into public and private. Public hospital buildings are owned by the state where as private hospital buildings are owned by individuals other the state, in addition hospital building many for health and safety of people only. Maintenance of the building will however ensure that the building is restored to its initial status and also increase the life span of the buildings.