ABSTRACT
This paper explores some of the strategic issues facing building maintenance decision makers. The pressures on maintainers to adopt a sound building maintenance policy are greater now than ever before. These pressures are coming from various quarters, for example from the aspirations inherent in facilities management and asset management and from the emphasis in the last decade on Life Cycle Costing and the concept of the economic life of buildings.
This paper explores some of the strategic issues and identifies the problems of arriving at a sound maintenance policy amidst the uncertainties that exist in the field. It goes on to demonstrate that whilst the maintenance policy may be based on rather abstract assumptions it has paradoxically an important role to play in maintenance planning at the operational level.
