Abstract

Building facilities compose a major part of any urban infrastructure. Despite their considerable economic, cultural and/or historic importance, several studies have shown that many buildings are sick, deteriorating and a major source of pollution. Maintaining a building is essential to keep it performing and functioning for a longer period of time as well as providing better quality of life for building occupants. Despite the importance of the condition assessment (CA) stage in the asset management process, literature review reveals that there is no building condition assessment framework that considers both physical and environmental conditions. Schools and educational facilities in Canada, which comprise a major component of the non-residential buildings sector, has passed 51% of their useful service life
The primary objective of this research is to develop an Integrated Condition Assessment Model for Educational Buildings that considers both building physical and environmental conditions. This model will assist owners and facility managers in the condition assessment phase during the asset management process. As buildings are composed of spaces; this proposed model uses “space” as the principal element of evaluation. The Multi Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) is used to calculate the physical and environmental conditions of each space, and the K-mean clustering is conducted to calculate the integrated condition of each one. Data are collected from experts via questionnaires to assign relative weights to models’ attributes using both the Analytical Network Process (ANP) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) techniques. The proposed methodology upgrades the use of an object-oriented Building Information Model (BIM) so that it can be used as a platform and an advanced tool for storing, exchanging, and transferring assessment data inputs as well as serving in the assessment process. Integrated Condition Assessment model for Buildings (ICAB) is the developed automated tool that integrates with Revit© 2011. This integration allows the BIM model to be used as the data source and to provide any required graphical representation.
The model is implemented and tested using data collected from experts and from field measurements taken from an educational building in Montreal. Finally, the model was validated by experts working in the facilities management field and they acknowledged having good potentials.