Research Title: To develop a maintenance policy document for the Asia Pacific regional office.

Background information of the selected case: International Baccalaureate is a not-for-profit educational organization that has 4 regional offices. The case study will be done with an overview of the organization’s processes across all offices. However, the document that will be worked on will be a policy document in place in the Singapore office and it can be used as a guideline for the other offices.

A basic maintenance policy must be practical and will consist of maintenance plan objectives, performance standards, and policy requirements.

This may slightly differ for each office based on the office and statutory requirements.

Currently, the office doesn’t have such a document in place therefore I will highlight the importance of having such a document in place.

Without such a document in place, there is no proper framework in an organization. In any company, it is indeed very important to have a proper framework that is documented and in place. To be able to develop such a document, it would require very good knowledge of what is the key business objective of the organization, use of the office building, requirements of the staff, and the statutory requirements of the country.

When relocating to another office, calling for quotations from service providers to dealing with adverse situations, it would be very helpful to have such a referential document in place. need and be able to request the services from the service providers however right now without such a document in place, they must rely on what the service provider is offering. This is an unacceptable practice.

In an organization, The facilities department would be the best team to understands the business objectives and the needs and wants of their stakeholders better than the service providers and they should be the ones to determine what needs to be included in the contracts with them. However, the current practice is vice versa. There should be a document which details out the inventory of the office, their requirements of services and the frequency based on our users and the usage.

Aim: To establish a standard framework which will be a guideline for the facilities management in the organization. This will consist of maintenance plan objectives, performance standards and policy requirements.

Introduction: The purpose of this research is to establish a maintenance policy document which consists of maintenance plan objectives, performance standards and policy requirements. This may slightly differ for each office across the globe based on the office and statutory requirements. Therefore, this document will be used as a basic document which can be used as a skeleton framework for them to create their own detailed document being aligned with their office and statutory requirements.

This policy will be used for the successors when taking over the facilities team in the future. It will help when deciding on new contracts and/or renewal of contracts. If there is a change of office, this will also assist to decide on the space and service requirement.

The maintenance policy is determined by:-

• Statutory requirements
• Organizational requirements
• Staff requirements
• Market requirements
• Industry standards
• Consequences of failure
• Overall organizational strategy and system interdependency.

The policy is to be updated on a regular basis to ensure it is up to date. It’s inclusive of the Business Continuity Plan (BCP), health and safety aspect of the organization which falls under the facilities management umbrella. Which is clearly proven to be very crucial during this Covid 19 Pandemic.

Objectives:

Research Objective 1: To analyze the current situation/ processes in place at International Baccalaureate. This includes understanding the methods of which the contracts are being created

Research Objective 2: To establish a standard framework which will be a guideline for the facilities management when requesting for proposals and creating contracts.

Research Objective 3: To identify the importance of having a maintenance policy document in an organization

Research Objective 4: To establish a comprehensive document which has detailed information on every service provider and the existing services of the organization. Not limiting to service providers but to ensure the health and safety aspects are covered.

Research Objective 5: To develop a framework document being aligned with the office and statutory requirements. This will encourage the adoption of sustainable & maintainability Standards.

Research Methodology: Develop theoretical framework and use it to design the survey questionnaire.

There are many research methods out in the market such as surveys, questionnaires, interviews, case studies, participant & nonparticipant observation and many more. I have narrowed down my choices by eliminating time consuming methods. An example of a time-consuming method would be to interview the participants hence I will not be choosing this method. Another aspect that will be taken into consideration would be the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). The priority will be to ensure anonymity, being able to reach a higher number of people within a shorter time.

I’ve decided on using the Questionnaire; A questionnaire is a good way to obtain information from people who may not have the time to take part in interviews or experiments and this is able to cover a large number of people within a shorter period. This allows the participants to take their time to think about their answers and answer it at their convenience.

The participants are also able to express their honest feelings/views with privacy without having to worry about the reaction of the researcher. Questionnaires are practical and inexpensive. They are scalable and offer a quicker way to get results from a large group of targeted audience from any part of the world; this can be done as simple as sending out a link to the survey online.

In terms of comparability which helps to compare the results this is a good option. Once the data is quantified, the results can be used to compare and contract other research and this can be used to measure a change where applicable. (Debois, 2021)

Based on judgemental sampling method, I worked on the targeted audience list to narrow down the results which helps to make it more relevant to the purpose of the research.

Judgemental sampling is an authoritative sampling which is a non-probability sampling technique in which the choice of audience is selected based on the researcher’s knowledge, requirements and judgement.

Using this sampling technique, the researcher’s knowledge is the key instrument in creating this sample. There is a higher chance of the results that are obtained is highly accurate and with small margin of error.

The process of selecting a sample using judgmental sampling involves the researchers carefully picking and choosing everyone to be a part of the sample. The researcher’s knowledge is primary in this sampling process as the members of the sample are not randomly chosen.(Judgmental Sampling: Definition, Examples and Advantages | QuestionPro, 2021)

Targeted audience: Facilities management staff of various levels – Varying from Managerial staff, facilities administrators and team members. This will be narrowed down with a minimum of 3-year experience in the facilities management.

The survey will be conducted online ensuring anonymity of the participant but not compromising on the quality or purpose of the questionnaire.

The age criteria will be a minimum of 28 years of age.

I intend to conduct a pilot test with similar criteria for the respondents and aim to target a much smaller number of audiences.

Pilot Test:Before the actual test, there would be a pilot test with 15- 20 similar respondents with similar criteria mentioned above as targeted audience.

The data analysis will be conducted using the Statistical Pack for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. This is mainly used by many groups of researchers for complex statistical data analysis. The main purpose of the program’s creation was for the management and analysis of social science data.

Rationale: In Singapore, according to the Building Construction Authority (BCA), the government has been serving as an early adopter simply through its procurement framework and this motivates the Facilities management sector to raise in terms of competency. High quality facilities management services are achievable by building on capabilities both as an organization and on a personal level. This is with the support from a tech leveraging & productive workforce. (Facilities Management (FM) | Building and Construction Authority (BCA), 2021)

It is equally important to ensure the sustainability of such standards.

In the future there is a high possibility of lapse in service standards. Without a framework in place, there will not be a reference model.

This acts as a primary purpose of the organization which the organization can use to establish and assist others to understand their processes and create a model or structure that ensures work is being accomplished efficiently and monitored consistently.

In the event of a change in the management and/or team, this will cover all grey areas left out during handovers and ensure a standard process in its place despite the changes. This document will include contents from the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) of the organization.

Especially during the current pandemic times, we have learned the importance of quick and rational thinking and processes; keeping in mind the health and safety of everyone. Therefore, it is very important to have such a document in place as a “one-stop-shop” to be able to get the key information in one place.

This will save time and manpower and at the same time help to observe trends and be able to anticipate situations and/or be able to resolve complex situations.