Conceptualising the Life Expectancy of House Components in Malaysia

¹ Department of Building and Construction Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia
² Faculty of Architecture, Planning, & Survey, Universiti Teknologi Mara, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: nhaslin@uthm.edu.my

Abstract

House maintenance is crucial to ensure the longevity of house components, in the same time retaining their functionality. Unfortunately, house owners are usually caught off-guarded, especially when house components were already deteriorated without warning. Adding salt to the wound, major house maintenance and rectification generally occur after defect liability period in which the costs incurred are not covered by the developer. The pertaining issue of lack prevention measures towards house components at certain point of time is prevalent. Since there is no established pre-rectification guideline that is able to assist house owners to proactively self-evaluate their house components from time to time, the said problem stays firm. Here, as far as maintenance’s guideline is concerned, knowledge gap in terms of life expectancy (LE) of generic house components is well observed. Therefore, the authors embarked on research exploration through literatures on identifying the factors leading to LE for house components and further suggested average LE for generic house components. However, the authors limit the paper within the initial process of research exploration to understand the central phenomenon of this study, which only governed the process of reviewing literatures. In a nutshell, the authors posit that LE was worth explored by embedding a multi-layered thematic analysis which comprised of several interconnected themes between house components and life expectancy of house component. Finally, the authors are optimist that the initial outcome from the literature reviews is paramount for subsequent phases, for instance validation and data gathering phases.