Despite the importance of building and infrastructure
maintenance and its role in cost control, savings in materials and
life cycle enlargement of equipment and facilities, maintenance is
often still regarded only as a disturbing factor which causes
Public school infrastructures to often suffer from the negative
effects of this philosophy.
It is important for managers to improve maintenance
performance of school organizations, focusing on areas such as
maintenance, building systems, safety improvements and
technology, if possible anticipating problems and opportunities in
time. To accomplish all of those goals, these organizations must
be determined to manage their available resources effectively and
to seek improvements for increasing efficiency.
In this context, and with the aim of characterizing the
Portuguese situation concerning the age and preservation of both
installations and fixed equipment of Educational Institutions, as
well as their maintenance strategies and politics, maintenance
auditing tools for school building assets were developed.
This paper presents an overview of maintenance conceptual
models as well as a proposal for a maintenance conceptual model
aimed at the Portuguese Educational Institutions.
The full version of this paper discusses the relevant role of
maintenance conceptual models in the development of
maintenance auditing tools and contains some results of a study
regarding the Portuguese Educational Buildings.