The Potential of Context-Aware Computing for Building Maintenance Management Systems

The increasing awareness of the importance of a proper building maintenance management system becomes the main contributing factor for the development of facilities management worldwide. Various building maintenance management system tools become necessary to remain competitive. The widespread use of mobile devices envisions a growing market for new applications in building maintenance. It is well-understood that the use of mobile technologies is critical in building maintenance as the right information needs to be delivered to the right person, at the right time, and at the right place. However, existing building maintenance applications only support the delivery of static modes of information (such as building data and checklists); the information is pre-programmed and is thus not able to take into account the users' varying contexts. Building maintenance applications could be made easy and responsive to users' wishes if they were context-aware. This paper discusses the key issues in building maintenance management systems and their potential for the use of context-aware computing. Findings show that many building maintenance management systems are complicated and only slowly being adopted in Malaysia. In conclusion, it was found that context-aware building maintenance systems have the potential to simplify the process and increase the usage of computerized maintenance management systems.