Final Research Report Part 1: Overview of losses from extreme events and building maintenance recommendations

SBEnrc project P1.53 Resilient Buildings: Informing Maintenance for Long-term Sustainability aimed to examine the role of maintenance in making buildings more resilient to extreme weather events, cyclones/storms, bushfires and floods, using technical knowledge to inform policy and practice. The focus was on existing public buildings and the methodology was to look for gaps in current policy and practice. Part 1 examined the impacts of extreme events, other emerging risks and the relationship between maintenance and resilience. Key recommendations include:

• Maintenance should be part of the design for durability. A maintenance scheme should be provided as part of the final design.
• A maintenance manual for each building including relevant as-built documentation should be compiled and made available for the people responsible for its maintenance.
• Routine maintenance inspection should be used to detect new emerging risks to buildings.
• Procurement frameworks for responsive maintenance should be developed. Also, the maintenance responsibilities of different parties should be established for whole-of-life value and sustainability.
• ‘Build back better’ should be followed for sustainable resilience and smart infrastructure with advanced digital integration used for effective and efficient maintenance.

The way to implement the above recommendations and recommendations in Parts 2, 3 & 4 is to create a ‘Framework for specifying building maintenance’, from which individual building maintenance manuals can be compiled from information provided in the framework.