A hybrid method for matching analysis of construction project characteristics with operation and maintenance requirements

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to extract the real requirements of the owner (or users) for the construction project in the operation and maintenance stage completely and accurately and carry out the construction based on the requirements, to make the project status and operation and maintenance requirements (RO&M) consistent after delivered. Design/methodology/approach: This study creatively proposes the operation and maintenance functions deployment (OMFD) under RO&M. In addition, the OPAR (naming is made up of the initials of owners, project, analysis and result) model is constructed to fully identify the requirements of both owners and projects. In this study, three typical construction projects are taken as examples to calculate the correlation strength between project characteristics (PC) and operation and maintenance requirements through the Apriori algorithm, and order parameters are obtained from the cost chain. Findings: This study found that there are significant differences in the correlation strength between 11 types of RO&M and PC, in which the “cost of types” (TC) correlation of residential housing and factory buildings is the largest, while the largest correlation demand of commercial buildings is “safety of types” (TS) and “system” (S). Simultaneously, through the calculation of order parameters, the most influential factors on project characteristics are obtained. Practical implications: This study could effectively help the owner (or users) to check whether the delivered project fully satisfy their real requirements and also extract the key technical points to realize RO&M, which can guide the accurate construction of the same type of projects. Originality/value: This research establishes OPAR model to accurately identify the requirements of the project in the operation and maintenance stage and establishes the association rules between the requirements and the construction scheme, which is helpful for the project to construct under the expected requirements.