- Title
- Deriving a tool to aid maintenance budget forecasting within universities of selected countries of Southern Africa
- Creator
- Peters, Peter Herman
- Subject
- Budget forecasting -- Universities -- Africa, Southern
- Date Issued
- 2019
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- DBA
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/44574
- Identifier
- vital:38137
- Description
- In general, facilities are constructed and equipment is procured to meet the functional and utilitarian needs of an organisation. Daily use and abuse can affect the functional value of these resources and without regular maintenance there will be no real benefits derived from non-functional facilities and equipment. Conducting effective and systematic maintenance is one of the fundamentals which underpins the success of an organisation and if ignored, could be costly to rectify. Costs escalate in the form of deferred maintenance budgets, which have a knock-on effect of growing year on year. This highlights the context of universities’ operations managers who may lack proper management and planning tools to either use or apply effective maintenance budget forecasting models. Having properly maintained facilities is imperative since deferring maintenance will adversely affect employees’ occupational health and safety, impact on the cost of operations and the morale of those who use the dysfunctional facility. The most daunting task of facility managers, is to ensure that all facilities remain fully and consistently operational. This entails providing an efficient maintenance service, which prevents system failures and extends the useful life of both the production plant and facilities to be managed. The need to protect costly and varied assets against the depredation of time and keeping it maintained for current use takes significant and continuous investment of time, money and human resources. Due to the cost of maintenance, in most instances maintenance is scheduled to be done when actual facilities are not in operation, usually at the end of a financial or calendar year. The intangible nature of the maintenance function and the inability to completely justify maintenance funding budgets, lead to the required funding not being obtained from a budgetary request. This inevitably has the undesirable consequences of huge capital backlogs in the form of deferred maintenance. This study moves the research problem and argument away from strictly for-profit business (manufacturing) entities to interrogate service-oriented parastatal and hybrid funded University facilities’ operations and maintenance management. Universities are multidisciplinary structures that encompass a broad spectrum of services required to ensure the effective and efficient academic, administrative, experimental and research focused operation of the Institution. Universities are not excluded from ensuring that sufficient funding is obtained for the effective maintenance of their facilities. This research aims to derive a tool to simplify the selection of a suitable maintenance budget forecasting model and to recommend a maintenance budgeting model for use within universities of selected countries of Southern Africa. The literature survey revealed that there are numerous maintenance budgeting forecasting models already in existence in many different shapes and sizes. For this reason, a content analysis was conducted of 31 maintenance budget forecasting models in order to be able to differentiate between the numerous models. This empirical study conducted among universities of selected countries of Southern Africa outlined the current maintenance funding models being used, inclusive of the amount of funding obtained and the existence/lack of deferred maintenance of various Institutions. After analysing the secondary data (in the form of a content analysis) and the empirical data collected, a model was chosen to recommend for implementation in future institutional planning and business practice. Based on the content analysis and empirical review, the recommended maintenance budget selection tool was derived focusing on sharpening the decision making process of selecting a suitable, fit for purpose, maintenance funding model. After this phase of the research, a follow up phase was conducted amongst high level executive decision makers, to qualitatively verify or support the findings from the first phase of the data collection. This research therefore concludes with recommendations to the respondent universities of selected countries of Southern Africa, about a suitable maintenance budgeting forecasting model. It also recommends a selection tool to use if alternative maintenance budget funding models need to be selected. This multidisciplinary study contributes to the literature by contextualising the maintenance budget forecasting for operational universities and in future adding significant value to the proactive management of deferred maintenance in practice.
- Format
- xvii, 181 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Peters, P 20130394 Thesis Dec 2019.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |