COVID-19 LESSON ON FACILITY MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC BUILDINGS

The emergence caused by the COVID-19 pandemic caused a strong impact even on people interaction with building environments. Public buildings were closed, while the regular access to public and private offices, industries and schools were significantly limited, requiring a quick transition towards different organizations. To reduce the number of people inside the buildings, web services were enhanced, and the practice of smart-working was extended. Nevertheless, during the pandemic, most buildings were normally left open, to allow the regular functioning of the services necessary to ensure smart-working and the necessary changes to HVAC systems to improve ventilation. Pandemic obliged facility managers to change operational and maintenance plans, mainly given the increase of HVAC requirements and the reduction of other types of services, with an important impact on building Operation and Maintenance (O&M) cost and previously defined maintenance strategies. This contribution analyses the impact of the pandemic on operation and maintenance activities on 20 buildings, part of the building stock of Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy), using data mining approaches. About 12000 end-users’ maintenance requests, generated after and during the different phases of the pandemic, were analysed and information about the change in facility management (FM) activity was collected, to understand how the postpandemic use scenario will impact the O&M (type and amount) and consequently how to improve FM outsourced contracts.