Knowledge-Based Optimization of Building Maintenance, Repair, and Renovation Activities to Improve Facility Life Cycle Investments

Buildings and related civil infrastructure are an important factor of production that contribute directly to the accomplishment of an organization’s mission and/or the generation of revenue. Aging, obsolescence, and general deterioration of these buildings, and their systems and components, can adversely affect the ability to accomplish a mission or generate expected revenue, thus resulting in an elevated risk profile. Maintenance, repair, and renovation (MR&R) activities, when planned effectively, can affect performance in such a way to reduce this risk. A rapidly aging infrastructure and building stock in the United States and across the world jeopardizes the ability to generate output and accomplish a mission at status quo. Moreover, rapidly expanding demands on some infrastructure will likewise make the status quo greatly inadequate in the near future. This requires two highly interrelated strategies: (1) to introduce new capabilities and capacities into the infrastructure stock to meet projected demand; and (2) to adequately manage, maintain, improve, and renew the existing infrastructure stock to slow performance degradation and fill demand gaps. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology for rapidly identifying and selecting multiyear building MR&R activities, such that facility performance is maximized and life cycle costs are minimized. This is a significant step toward the development of a comprehensive facility life cycle MR&R model that incorporates infrastructure economics and uncertainty for improved decision making. The result of this study is a model framework, to be applied against a building or group of buildings, which selects the optimum mixture of work activities considering condition, capability, performance, and life cycle costs. A genetic algorithm is employed to optimize the activity selection, and the proposed model approach is implemented against an example building to illustrate the methodology.