How much do choices impact environmentally the maintenance activities? A measurement framework based on ecological footprint

The Architecture-Engineering-Construction-Operation (AECO) industry is responsible for a very high environmental degradation. In this context, the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phase of building life cycle is recognized as the highest influencer of the industry's environmental impact. Even if sustainable constructions refer to improve the efficiency of buildings throughout more sustainable processes, such as waste-generation reduction and resource-use optimization, most efforts have focused on improving energy efficiency during O&M. Especially, being maintenance a critical activity to optimize building management, a framework to measure the effects on environmental sustainability seems to be missing in the facility management field. The present research introduces a framework for measuring the environmental impact of maintenance activities to support facility managers to (i) calculate the effectiveness of maintenance choices, (ii) guide the maintenance activities over times, (iii) optimize the environmental effect of maintenance activities. After selecting the Ecological Footprint as the best methodology for these purposes, the authors implement the calculation model, and test it on four case study buildings. Results highlight the potential of such a model to guide facility managers throughout different maintenance strategies. Measuring the potential gains over a time span of 50 years, the total impact of predictive maintenance approach is the 5% higher than the corrective one. However, future improvements need to collect more data about the maintenance activities to better specify the calculations. Digital technology, such as a network of IoT for maintenance monitoring, would help the data collection and better test the model and its impact on the maintenance procedure.