Condition Assessment Model for Residential Apartment

A condition assessment [3] needs to be performed annually because the more the duration taken to assess the building the more expensive it becomes. The statement is supported by [4] who states that the more the frequent the inspection is done, the less expensive the inspection. Majorly, the cost of inspection is the primary challenge when it comes to condition assessment, and this implies that detailed information should be collected during a field inspection to ensure enough information is available for a complete inspection. Several buildings are aging across in several countries are deteriorating and aging, and this implies that many people are being put at risk in their own homes, but a unified assessment model for improving the conditions of these buildings’ conditions is yet to be developed [5].

This research is supported by [3] who established that several other condition assessment models in use across the world and other countries such as Canada, the United States, and other parts in Europe. An organization may employ an outside consultant or an in-house consultant to conduct a condition assessment of their buildings. However, for residential apartments, it may be expensive for an individual to hire a specialist to do this exercise [1]. This view is supported by [8] which says that small firms find it difficult to afford a condition assessment specialist. It is then important that a condition assessment to have a thorough understanding of the facility maintenance and operations and have adequate time to perform this task. [9] say that all inspection team members must be well trained and knowledgeable to conduct the inspection.

RECCAP- This condition assessment system was developed to support data gathering and inspection process for audit clients. Its major components include checklist-style inspection and condition indexes. TOBUS- This is the most framework that was developed by the European Commission in the JOULE II program. TOBUS assessment covers the degree and extent of physical degradation as well as other requirements needed to renovate the office buildings [12]. Primarily, a condition assessment system should facilitate the ranking of a building’s components depending on the amount of repair required to complete the task [13]. Globally, several steps have been made to establish a hierarchy of building objects within private building domains, but this has not been achieved for various reasons. Several other efforts have been made to develop a hierarchy of building objects within the domain of building information, and this has been pushed by several government proprietary agencies to have an asset management system.

For instance, according to [19], they were involved in the creation of a building hierarchy project in which they used components from the central library of building components. This asset hierarchy was critical in representing multidisciplinary design data within a particular building space. The table below gives a summary of the hierarchy systems that have been developed as a result of the efforts by various government agencies across many cities. A. WSDOT 2000 Source: [20] More than that, private proprietors have either developed their own commercial software systems for their buildings and their parts. Among this private software include TOBUS, BUILDER, and RECAPP among others. The following table gives a summary of the most commonly used commercial condition assessment software for asset management with building hierarchies.

Table 2: The commonly used condition assessment software systems Hierarchy Name Twelve systems with one hundred and fifty components. Additionally, in areas where evaluation of new elements is required, the RECAPP hierarchy needs a manual addition of new instances for the parts of the components with that specific condition. As a result, if this is to be done for every element, then, the whole inspection becomes expensive and time-consuming. The TOBUS hierarchy asset conditioning software contains a checklist of databases with seventy objects, and these include fire protection, roofing, and faced among others [9]. These objects are subdivided into twelve types of subcomponents to account for any difference in the material or design of the object [1]. Asset hierarchy is a critical part of condition assessment systems because of the role they play in condition assessment.

2 Condition Evaluation Mechanisms [2] indicated the assessment of a single component of a building may be done either through the distress survey method or the direct-condition rating survey method or using both methods. According to [22], the distress survey method is a bit accurate and reliable method. On the contrary, the direct-condition rating method is less accurate, but it is much faster compared to the distress survey method. In a direct-condition rating method, the inspection officer makes a direct visual inspection of the building and its components by taking an evaluation of the item against preset criteria. [22] divided the distress survey method into two main categories; distress survey with or without sampling and suggested that each classification was suitable to a specific stage of condition assessment in the component’s lifecycle.

Studies have indicated that in most developed countries, the built environment, particularly residential apartments were built in many decades ago and this implies that their components have been affected by the adverse weather conditions among other factors which have made them risky for the inhabitants to continue living in these houses [5]. With this said, Europe, for instance, spends about half of its expenditure on maintaining, remediating, and repairing their buildings [24]. This statement is supported by [14] who says that the premature deterioration of apartments, especially in the urban setting, is becoming a major challenge in many countries due to adverse weather conditions. [24] report that human-made practices on the environment have contributed significantly to the deterioration of buildings across the world and this is not expected to stop any soon since the world population is increasing day-by-day.

Majorly, most of the built environment’s deterioration arises from air pollution because of their long life. For instance, these models are applied to predict the probable time of repair of the building and the building materials or the refurbishment date, and this may be associated with higher refurbishment costs [26]. [27] defined a service life of an apartment or building component, measured in years, within which the all properties and elements, starting from the time of installation, exceed the minimum acceptable values when they are maintained on a regular basis. Mostly, the service life prediction in many countries is treated differently depending on the accepted standards and building codes. However, several other international standards are underway to lay a standardized code on how to treat the service life prediction correspondences.

For instance, the estimated Service Life and the Reference Service Life methods have been categorized into one of the following groups; factor method, the probabilistic method, and engineering approach [27]. The findings from this study showed that to develop an Assessment Method for Building Rehabilitation requires inspectors to have checklists, a computer tool for recording checklist data, and guidelines on how to record the collected data, and how to fill the checklists. In their recommendations, the researchers recommend that the most applicable assessment model should exhibit crucial rehabilitation needs defined in a three level scale. By proposing the proposed assessment model, this survey concluded by stating that this assessment model is applicable to several structures regardless of the use of the structure, construction process or construction date.

4 Rehabilitation of the existing apartments Rehabilitation of apartments refers to the act of refurbishing a residential house whose wiring, plumbing, sewerage, floors, and other appliances have deteriorated [11]. Research shows that the current asset rehabilitation programs are replacement-based programs since asset replacement is assumed to be a particular case for the built environment. 2 Estimation of costs Costs for each alternative need to be estimated before arriving at the most preferred approach. 3 Compare alternatives Use a common metric to establish the net present value (NPV) for each alternative. 4 Analysis of the results and reevaluation alternatives The inspection officer need to evaluate the effects and compare the substantial costs and assumptions among other factors. [8] suggests that the most critical factor in LCCA does not rest with the selection of one strategy over the other, but involves the variety of the most cost-effective approach which will give maximum benefit to the owner.

5 The initial strategy and analysis According to [13], there are particular baseline decisions have to be made with which LCCA has to be conducted, and these decisions include: Alternative Pavement designs- Alternative pavement designs constitutes of the initial pavement decisions as well as the alternative supportive maintenance and rehabilitation activities. This implies that the system will take into consideration the net present value (NPV) of the building to reflect the life cycle cost of the apartment’s components. As for such, other refurbishment actions, if correctly used, they may decrease the level of energy efficiency thus decreasing the LCCA. This implies that the potential energy saving cost may be reduced in the overall budget and this may allow more refurbishment work to be done using minimal resources.

The Net Present Value computation method may be denoted by: NPV= -I + ∑ (i=1)^N(Bi –Ci)/ (1+R)I + S/ (1+R)N Where, I0 = initial action cost; Bi = annual energy saving income Ci = annual refurbishment action cost; N = expected lifespan of an action; S = action residual value; R =the discount rate The Life Cycle Cost analysis is an important tool which may be used to evaluate the long-term benefit of the built structures. Over recent years, studies have shown that many house maintenance agencies have turned to the Life Cycle Cost analysis as a tool for examining the long-term economic viability of the built environment. Thus, in the case where the building is so large, the exercise may become expensive and tedious.

Additionally, the existing models lack a mechanism for prioritizing inspection of the built assets. The literature above shows that the existing condition assessment approaches require a tool for immediate inspection of residential buildings. More than that, there is no efficient mechanism for deploying the available inspectors as well as minimizing the frequency of inspection. Aside from that, the existing models lack a time-related condition assessment records. Building condition assessment for new houses: a case study in terrace houses.  Journal Teknologi, 70(1), 43-50. [2] Abbott, G. R. , McDuling, J. L. The influences of the built environment and residential self-selection on pedestrian behavior: evidence from Austin, TX.  Transportation, 33(1), 1-20. [4] Ballarini, I. , Corgnati, S.  Energy and Buildings, 37(5), 515-527ADOE. Alaska Department of Education [online]. Available from at http://www.

eed. state.  Journal of Cleaner Production, 164, 1081-1092. [7] Semaan, N. Subway station diagnosis index condition assessment model.  Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 15(3), 222-231. [8] FHWA. [10] Lai, A. C. K. , Mui, K. W. Subway station diagnosis index condition assessment model.  Journal of Infrastructure Systems, 15(3), 222-231. [13] Wahida, R. N. , Milton, G. [14] Swan, L. G. , & Ugursal, V. I. Modeling of end-use energy consumption in the residential sector: A review of modeling techniques. [17] Charette,B. & Maarshal,T. Assessment method for buildings’ rehabilitation needs. Development and application. In 2010 CIB World Congress, Salford Quays (Inglaterra) (Vol. H. , Roper, K. , & Castro-Lacouture, D. GA-based decision support system for housing condition assessment and refurbishment strategies.  Automation in Construction, 18(4), 394-401.  Journal of construction engineering and project management, 2(1), 27-34. [22] Uzarski, D. Knowledge-based condition survey inspection concepts.