Measuring performance for building maintenance providers

A building maintenance scheme was introduced in Hong Kong Housing Authority in January 2006 which employed contractors to provide inspection inside the public housing tenants' units and arranged necessary repair works. This study aims to assess the contractor service quality performance. A method of assessment is devised based on the SERVQUAL approach to measure the public housing owner's frontline representatives' expectations and perceptions of the contractors' performance. The outcome indicates that the deficiencies of service quality variables are related to the willingness of the contractors to provide prompt responses to requests from the tenants or the owner's frontline representatives, and the availability of sufficient resources to perform the promised service dependably and accurately in terms of time, cost, and quality. The outcome of this study helps to identify the weaknesses of the contractors and allows them to properly allocate resources to those urgently needed variables. The implications from this study are considered and recommendations for industrial practices and further research are made.