Revealing the service gaps in building maintenance service delivery: balancing providers' perspectives with users' perspectives

摘要

This paper reports a study that revealed the service mismatch in resource allocations in the maintenance management of university building defects. Due to scarcity of resources couple with the need to improve user satisfaction, maintenance organisations are faced with the problems of balancing the demand and supply issues in defect management to improved productivity and satisfactions. This study uses SERVQUAL model and Pareto principle to prioritise defects in university buildings. The paper reviewed related literature and present the outcome of a survey questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered to maintenance management organisations and university building users. With response rate of 66% and 81%, wide variability was discovered with respects to the measurement the maintenance organisations attached to defects with the measurement of the building users. This is revealed as the major factor leading to misallocations of resource and poor service delivery. The study illustrates that the gap analysis adapted to defects management presented here highlights the consequence of engaging the users in maintenance service delivery in order to increase profits, productivity and total satisfactions. This technique places more emphasis to the process and procedure of creating the maintenance rather than the actual repair.