Council building management practices, case study and road ahead

Community building assets in Australia represent a vast investment built up over many generations, and are valued at approximately 15 billion dollars. Further, the second largest class of infrastructure assets owned by councils is the community buildings. It is vital to develop strategic directions for efficient management of these buildings to guarantee the best value and the maximum benefit to the community by delivering the best possible service to the community. Efficient building management should address the aspects of assessing long term performance and developing long term management strategies. This paper investigates the significant aspects of efficient building management through a holistic look at the whole of life infrastructure management process. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the paper presents a typical building management process together with the identification of specific elements and/or various stages of the process. This can be easily converted to be applicable to any other infrastructure system. Second, the initial study and data collection conducted at six Victorian city councils covering the council building management practices are presented. These six current practices are analysed and presented as case studies. Third, the paper identifies knowledge/practice gaps between the theoretical foundation of building management process and current practices in the industry. The paper highlights the lessons learnt through the analysis of case studies. Further, it proposes the road ahead of council building management strategy through a holistic analysis of the whole of life infrastructure management process.