Design phase maintenance checklist for water supply and drainage systems

The majority of operation and maintenance challenges in building projects are attributed to the decisions made during the design phase. The timely involvement of the maintenance team in the design development and review stages provides a potential for reducing maintainability problems during the functional life of buildings. This paper identifies and assesses the significant water supply and drainage systems' design defects that commonly occur in the building projects in Saudi Arabia as a consequence of the lack of maintenance feedback to the design team. These defects were identified based on knowledge from the published literature and professional practice. The research reported in this paper endorsed the importance of all the recognized defects based on the appraisal of the executives of the campus maintenance departments in the 13 public Saudi Arabian universities renowned for operating and maintaining substantial building stock. The paper then presents a series of validated maintainability design review checklists by the survey participants, derived to reduce the occurrence of the identified defects. These checklists are available for consideration by design professionals at two main design completion stages, i.e., (1) 60%, and (2) 90%. This paper is of practical value to design professionals aiming to design maintainable building projects, and maintenance managers striving to provide the most efficient level of service to occupants and property owners.