ASSESING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MAINTENANCE PRACTICES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The Maintenance management sector in public section in Nigeria has suffered from lack of funds and negligence for a period of time. The education sector was not spare of the menace as well; huge amount of money is often invested in the provision of infrastructure in the sector while the aspect of maintenance is often neglected. Therefore in this study assessment of the effectiveness of maintenance practices in public schools was carried out using Kaduna state of Nigeria as case study. The sampling survey was limited to the existing institution. A total of eighty (80) questionnaires were administered. Eighty (80) copies of the drafted and approved questionnaires were administered with the aim of achieving the following: To assess the operational (physical-functional condition) of public schools in Kaduna state as carried out by the maintenance department. Mean item score and simple percentage was used to process the data. To examine the effectiveness of maintenance practices strategy used in maintaining the buildings. To determine the prevailing method of executing maintenance practices and study its efficiency either by direct labour or contract. To ascertain the factors that militates against. From data analysis. It was observed that lack of proper phasing of maintenance workload can give rise to uneconomical maintenance management practice. It was also observed from analysis, that some major variables lead to the inefficiency and in effectiveness of the maintenance projects includes: the occurrence of poor contract management, lack of availability of materials and the incidence of in accurate estimate. KEY WORDS: Maintenance, Practice, Effective, Assess