Maintenance of Buildings of Public Institutions in Ghana. Case Study of Selected Institutions in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

A building fabric is referred to as an “environmental envelope” because it is the means by which the natural or external environment may be modified, to produce a satisfactory internal environment for man to live in. The deterioration of buildings hampers its ability to perform adequately, thus is important to ensure proper maintenance to prevent deterioration. Public buildings represent significant investment of the tax payers’ money and therefore preserving these building systems is important. Due to the neglect of the maintenance component of the housing process in the country, a lot of public and private residential buildings are in a state of disrepair. In view of the above, this study was designed to assess the current condition of public buildings, identify the underlying principal causes of poor maintenance of public buildings, analyse the maintenance policy and practice and capacity of the maintenance and estate departments of public institutions and make suggestions and recommendations towards the adoption of effective maintenance policy and innovations that would address the building maintenance problem in public institutions. The field investigations focused on residential buildings of GPS, GHS nurses quarters and UEW-K. Three different housing types were defined for data collection and analyses including: bungalows, tenement houses and single unit houses. Through the application of multi-stage cluster sampling and purposive and random sampling techniques, 176 buildings were covered in the survey. The survey revealed that there is a real housing maintenance problem in public institutions in Ghana. The study revealed that on the whole, 83 percent of all residential buildings of public institutions surveyed have maintenance problems with maintenance problem being more prominent in GPS and UEW-K with 41.2 percent and 30.8 percent of their buildings in a bad condition, with 14.3 percent of those of GHS in the same situation. Maintenance problems by housing types in public institution revealed that building maintenance problems are more pronounced in single unit houses than tenement houses and bungalows with 48.4 percent, 37.5 percent and 5 percent respectively in bad condition. However, tenement houses had the highest buildings with good condition, with 37.5 percent of all tenement houses surveyed in good condition requiring the least or no maintenance. The study also established the following factors as being responsible for the poor maintenance of public buildings: The age of the buildings, Lack of maintenance culture, Inadequate funds and high maintenance cost, Pressure on building facilities by number of users and Poor construction work and maintenance work done by maintenance personnel of the institution. Stakeholders in the housing sector also added to the problem has arisen as a result of lack of preventive maintenance plan, low capacity of maintenance personnel in terms of staffing and training, absence of a national maintenance policy and apathy and lack of patriotism on the part of some public employees occupying government bungalows. The study concludes by enumerating a number of recommendations aimed at providing the necessary framework for proper and effective maintenance of buildings. These are: the need for public institutions to embrace preventive maintenance practice as a high priority rather than adhoc maintenance. Managers are to oversee periodic inspections of buildings’ conditions and create an inventory of buildings’ components and equipment. Public institutions should ensure that their maintenance department is adequately staffed. There is also the need for a national policy on maintenance to be formulated to protect buildings, institution of a maintenance awards scheme for public institutions and establishing a maintenance fund to be managed for maintenance of public buildings in the country.

Source: KNUST