Abstract
The role of facilities management in decisions made during the design phase is an essential tool that an architect must rely on during the design phase. However, this role has not been developed as required in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and third world countries in general. In the Kingdom, we are limited to considering periodic maintenance only after operation. Therefore, the research aims to identify and study the factors that achieve the efficiency of the capacity of public facilities for maintenance through the stages of designing the public establishment, through: 1) identifying and studying the factors that contribute to building the enhancement of maintainability during the design stages of the facility. 2) To develop a methodology that enables determining the level of importance of each design criterion for maintenance. 3) Developing a methodology to systematically acquire and properly document maintenance knowledge and practices throughout the design process. The research followed a knowledge building approach derived from literature review and from professional practitioners through previous literary reviews and interviews with specialists. This, in addition to using the indicator of relative importance to assess the standards of maintainability and arrange them according to priority. The research concluded that there are ten criteria that must be taken into account during the design process which are accessibility, durability, cleanability, availability of materials, standardization, simplicity and flexibility, modularity, ability to extrapolate and control systems, user desire and facility accessories. Among the most important criteria that must be taken into account during the design process are accessibility, availability of materials and durability, among the most important maintenance criteria that must be taken into account in the initial design stages of any facility with a level of importance of 94%, 89%. and 87% respectively. The researcher recommended the importance of establishing a common knowledge database at the national level to bridge the knowledge gap witnessed in the lack of information about knowledge of maintainability standards. The importance of the research is to assist architects who aim to design easily maintainable projects and strive to provide the most efficient level of services to building occupants and owners.