A Maturity Model for Maintenance Departments of Public Organisations

Abstract

The growing awareness of delivering public services into more costumer-oriented minded triggers the public organisations to manage their assets professionally. Building assets are one of the resources owned by the public organisations that need to be maintained. Maintenance departments are part of the public body that have responsibilities to make sure that the building assets are functioning well and can perform for what it is designed for. The problems arise when there are many buildings that should be managed within different functions and types; such as monumental buildings, schools, offices, etc. creates complexities. Furthermore, the nature of public organisations is different compared to private organisations. Public organisations must follow the law and regulations, facilitating stakeholders’ opinions and politics, and satisfying public. It is questioned whether the maintenance departments are capable to perform the maintenance activities professionally. In order to reveal the capabilities of an organisation a measurement tool is needed. One of the measurement tools that can disclose the professionalism of organisations is a maturity model. With maturity model, an organisation can understand their current maturity level and design their strategy to reach the next level. Furthermore, this is a self-assessment tool that is simple to use. A maturity model can consist of several levels of five, six, or seven, that will depend on the desired function. It is believed that the higher the level, the more professional is the organisation. Several quality management tools are being used by many organisations to enhance their professionalism, for instance the EFQM model. The EFQM model is commonly used in Europe that has components of “enablers” and “results”. By using those components, organisations can value their performances and processes. The main purpose of this research is to develop a maturity model that can measure the capabilities of maintenance departments. By having this tool that specifically designed for building maintenance departments, they can design strategies that fit their goals. Furthermore, to narrow down the research, the subjects of Planned preventive maintenance and Responsive maintenance are involved. To develop a maturity model as an adaptation of the EFQM model, there are several steps to do. Firstly, the literature reviews are conducted. The topics that have to be explored are the types of maturity models, the EFQM model, and the activities of maintenance departments include the Planned preventive maintenance and Responsive maintenance. There are two maturity models that become main references; the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) by Paulk et.al (1993) and the Public Commissioning Maturity Model (PCMM) by Hermans et.al (2014). The main important aspects of the maintenance departments are then summarised and linked to those maturity models and the EFQM enablers. The result is the proposed maturity model. Secondly, the first round interviews are conducted to get opinions and feedbacks from the experts about the proposed maturity model. This will find the relevancy of the key aspects in the model. The results of these interviews are the proposed maturity model and maturity levels. The third step in this research is to design an assessment sheet that can be used to measure the maturity level. This proposed assessment sheets are consisting of 26 questions with five multiple choices for each question. The fourth step is to carry on the second round interviews to explore whether the proposed assessment sheet is relevant to test maintenance departments. The results of the interviews improve the questions and the multiple answers, which are improving the maturity levels. Finally, as final products of this research, a maturity model for maintenance departments and an assessment sheet are formed. The final maturity model consists of five main aspects, 20 sub aspects, and five levels for every main aspects and sub aspects. The final assessment sheet is consisting of 27 questions with five multiple answers per question.