A survey of maintenance management systems in South African tertiary educational institutions

The implementation of an effective maintenance management system is vital if the maintenance of assets of any organisation or institution is to be managed effectively. A survey was undertaken among tertiary educational institutions in South Africa to identify a list of best practice criteria and to prioritise these in order of importance. The study evaluated the performance of the existing maintenance management systems used by tertiary educational institutions to determine whether there is a need to improve current maintenance management systems. Results showed that existing performance is far below best practice standards and that the use of computerised maintenance management systems is very limited. This led to the development of a model to assist maintenance managers at tertiary educational institutions to evaluate and improve their existing approaches to maintenance management.