Reducing the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and shrinking the environmental footprint are priority themes of the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy of Canada. Public buildings account for the major portion of the corporate GHG footprint of public sector institutions. Improving the energy efficiency in buildings is vital in achieving the climate action targets pertaining to the public sector. According to Canadian Infrastructure Report Card, the physical condition of public buildings is expected to deteriorate in the future. In order to make the best use of the limited financial resources, hybrid building management plans which combine energy efficiency with physical condition improvement need to be developed. Building maintenance and retrofit plans are formulated for medium and long terms in the capital asset planning process. There is significant uncertainty associated with asset management decision making due to macro-economic variations such as technological advancements and new policies. At present, there are no pragmatic decision making methods that assist building asset management while incorporating future macro-economic changes. This research aims to bridge the aforementioned gap in literature by developing a multi-period asset management framework.

The overall objective of the proposed research is aimed at developing a decision support framework for small and medium scale municipalities in Canada to attain climate action targets of municipal buildings, while prolonging the service life of the building components. This research will help to identify, evaluate, and prioritize maintenance or repair or replacement strategies, and to develop a comprehensive multi-period life cycle asset management plan based on allocated funding, targeted sustainability performance and future macro-economic changes. The findings of this research will extend the current body of knowledge by incorporating potential future technological advancement and climate action targets into the asset management decision making. The proposed asset management decision support framework consists of a retrofit investment planning method, a level of service (LOS) index, life cycle costing (LCC) technique, and a risk based maintenance planning approach. This research is expected to assist at all decision making levels in public sector institutions related to building asset management, and thereby in achieving corporate climate action targets.