Dubai, the city of the highest human-made structure in the world (Burj Khalifa). Have you ever imagined how this building is maintained? Dubai is a city with the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Overall, Dubai has 18 structures that rise at least 300 meters in height. That is more than any other city in the world. Downsizing the competition between cities who have skyscrapers more than 100 meters in height, it ranks the 8th, making it among the human-made tallest skyline cities. So, how are all these buildings keeping their high performance and operating efficiently? Every kind of structure needs maintenance typically to uphold structural stability, optimise performance and determine the causes of defects to fix them. However, in the case of skyscrapers, you’ll need multiples a considerable amount of effort and equipment to do so. For example, Burj Khalifa has 24830 windows; when the building was being cleaned in 2012 it required a team of 36 workers working over three months with a total of more than 17000 hours of work to clean it! That’s a minimal scope of work comparing with all the types of maintenance that should be executed in such a building as:
- Painting and plastering.
- Lightning.
- Gardening.
- Plumping.
- Flooring and tiling repairs.
- HVAC system maintenance.
- Fire detectors, alarms and sensors maintenance.
- Infrastructure maintenance.
- Windows and doors repairs.
- Cleaning and decorating.
In case of operating a 100+ floors building, you will need to know how much each point can consume from working hours to labourers and what is the average accuracy that can result in the end? After calculating all this input data input, you should arrange a marginal crossing plan for all the maintenance types needed, followed by an execution plan that distributes job roles among the working labour force.
Skyscrapers maintenance – A composite plan!
The most important thing you should know about maintenance is the constant and regular observation will minimise your bigger risks and snags. According to designing buildings UK, there are seven types of maintenance to be considered in construction:
- Planned maintenance: Carried out on a regular basis, such as servicing boilers.
- Preventive maintenance: Carried out in order to keep something in working order or extend its life, such as replacing cracked roofing tiles before inclement weather.
- Corrective maintenance: This involves repairing something that has broken, such as a window or guttering.
- Front-line maintenance: This involves maintaining something while it is still in use, such as repainting and decorating an occupied building.
- Proactive maintenance: Maintenance work that is undertaken to avoid failures or to identify defects that could lead to failure.
- Reliability centred maintenance: A combination of maintenance strategies used to ensure a physical asset continues to function correctly.
- Scheduled maintenance: Preventive maintenance carried out in accordance with predetermined intervals, number of operations, hours run, and so on.
These types of maintenance are operating interchangeably all-time according to the situation. However, they all need to be organised and controlled with a technology tool to ensure optimum efficiency and reduce unexpected errors.
How defect tracking software can assist in the maintenance of these glass giants
Well, commonly, a large labour force and energy needed to work on the maintenance plan for large and intricate structures. But in the case of skyscrapers, this energy will not be enough alone. As the working field is getting bigger, the chance of human error occurrence is also getting higher. Meanwhile using a defect tracking and documenting software became an essential need in this case. Yes, nothing can replace the human eye in checking on the building performance, but this eye should always be coupled with a tool for documenting to make sure that there is never a forgotten defect somewhere. Using software as PlanRadar in the maintenance of skyscrapers will enable you to:
- Produce ticket of any defect in the building in a minute even if you are offline.
- Send this ticket to the responsible party for fixing it.
- Attach digital plans for the whole building to ease navigation and tickets pinning.
- Customizing fields depending on the building maintenance segments.
- Generate pdf reports that will show you the conditions of the ticket, what completed and what is still pending, this feature in specific can guide you to know what is the weakest points in the building that continuously have defects so you formulate a renovating system for it.
Finally, if you are in charge of operating and maintaining a skyscraper building, you must know that your role includes guarantying safety for hundreds of users every day. Imagine a defect on one fire alarm or fire exit door in the 90th floor. Any such minor deficiency can cause a real disaster. Consider implementing software and technology solutions that can enhance your job performance and save lives.
