A Review on The Critical Influencing Factor for Life Expectancy (LE) and The Life Expectancy (LE) for Malaysian Housing

Abstract

Abstract In 2013, there are two death cases reported due to the broken railing at the Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) flats in the capital city of Malaysia. These cases occurred due to rusting of the balcony railing, which has been neglected in maintenance. These were the evidence of awareness lacking on the need for maintenance, which frequently only be realised at the latter stage of deterioration on house components. The situation aggravated when the house owners do not have any technical knowledge about defects and have zero building construction background, which later on resulting in less to none periodic assessment throughout the life expectancy (LE) of house components. Nevertheless, the absence of Malaysian study on the life expectancy of house components is deemed the centre of the predicament. Therefore, the paper aims to review the critical influencing factor for life expectancy (LE) and the Life Expectancy (LE) for Malaysian housing. Thus, a qualitative undertaking is conducted through multi-layered thematic analysis. As a result, there were eight influencing factors of life expectancy (LE) namely; weather and climate condition; design; maintenance and replacement; the intensity of use; quality of materials and products; technological obsolescence; workmanship; and insects damaged. Afterwards, within 114 number of generic house components, the findings indicated that there were differences of LE for house components; averaging from 14 years to more than 100 years. The particular differences also depend on the influencing factors of LE. These findings were then become the basis for the subsequent research endeavour.