SUSTAINABLE FACILITIES MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING PERFORMANCE OF EXISTING OFFICE BUILDINGS

Abstract

Facilities Management (FM) is a profession that is growing rapidly. The term Sustainable FM (SFM) was introduced by several authors to integrate sustainability principles into FM (Hodges, 2005, Nielsen et al., 2009 and Shah, 2007). The Inter-Ministerial Committee for Sustainable Development (IMCSD) targeted 80% of the buildings in Singapore to obtain at least a Green Mark certification by 2030 (BCA, 2010). A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and International Facility Management Association (IFMA) in 2010 to spearhead the SFM practices in Singapore to deliver a sustainable built environment. This signifies that there is a need to have a framework to guide firms and FM personnel in achieving SFM. The aim of this study is to incorporate sustainable practices into FM to manage an existing building. The specific objectives are to develop a sustainable FM framework for office buildings that incorporates the sustainability principles: economic, social and environmental, to construct an assessment method to evaluate an existing office building and to apply the proposed SFMIndices with a case study.

This study focuses on the performance assessment of existing office buildings in Singapore. Existing building assessment methods are reviewed and their strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The variables under the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environment were identified through literature review and an exploratory study. The survey research design was adopted and data were collected using self-administered questionnaire sent out via mail. The sample was selected using random sampling method and the response rate was 32%. Descriptive and statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS software.

Independent sample t-test was used to study if there are significant differences between Green Mark and non-Green Mark certified non-residential buildings. Pearson correlation analysis was adopted to examine the relationships between the independent variables and energy and water consumption. Subsequently, respondents were asked to rate the importance of each variable to achieve SFM using one sample t-test.

The results show that GM and non-GM certified buildings adopted significantly different FM practices and policies. There are significant relationships between SFM practices and building performance. Subsequently, the means of the significant important variables were used to construct SFMIndices. The indices ware calculated using Multi-Attribute Value Theory (MAVT). A case study was carried out to illustrate the application of the indices.

This study is important because existing building performance can be evaluated using SFMIndices to integrate economic, social and environment aspects. In addition, the proposed SFMIndices can be used as guidelines in implementing SFM and assisting a firm¿s decision making in FM. It is suggested that future research be carried out to collect more building samples using SFMIndices and the top 10% performance can then be used as a benchmarking tool.