Assessment of defects in HVAC systems caused by lack of maintenance feedback to the design team

Abstract

Research has shown that a major part of the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems’ operation and maintenance challenges is attributed to the extent of the decisions made during the design stage of projects. Transfer of knowledge from the maintenance team to the design team provides a potential for avoiding the repetition of costly design defects that maintenance teams usually encounter during the functional life of the project. This research has two objectives. The first is to identify and assess the importance of HVAC design defects caused by the lack of maintenance feedback to the design team. These defects have been identified from the literature and interviews with operation and maintenance experts. The study emphasized the importance of all the identified defects based on the judgment of the maintenance experts in 13 public universities in Saudi Arabia. The second objective is to present three sets of validated maintainability guidelines developed to reduce the occurrence of the identified defects in HVAC systems. These guidelines could be considered at three design completion phases (i.e. 30%, 60%, and 90%). This research provides a useful focus to design engineers aiming to design maintainable facilities and maintenance administrators striving to provide high-quality services to facility users.

Keywords:

• HVAC defects
• maintenance feedback
• guidelines

Acknowledgements

The authors thank King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals for the support and facilities that made this research possible. The authors acknowledge the cooperation of the executives of the maintenance departments in the 13 public Saudi Arabian universities who assessed the operation and maintenance challenges, as well as the maintainability guidelines presented in this paper.