This unique manual provides much-needed guidance on the whole-life performance of building services components - which often account for 600f a building's running costs. Service lives of components are explained - from control valves to hydraulic lifts, and are ranked according to recognized quality benchmarks, with adjustment factors for differing environments, use patterns and operating regimes. Summaries of typical inspection and maintenance requirements are given, along with specification guidance and references to further detailed sources of information.

This comprehensive durability manual provides essential data for whole-life costing and maintenance planning exercises by explaining:

* service lives of the most common components

* key durability issues

* whole-life performance benchmarks

* the most frequent failure modes

The research for this manual was carried out by Building Performance Group Ltd (BPG), under the sponsorship of Defense Estates, an executive agency of the UK Ministry of Defense.

Over the last ten years BPG has worked in the field of component durability, embracing component data from condition surveys, defects investigation and involvement with latent defects insurance for Housing Association Property Mutual and Building LifePlans Ltd (BLP). It is under the aegis of BLP, which utilizes the component durability data to support its long-term insurance products for commercial buildings, that this manual has been published.

BPG and its subsidiary company Construction Audit Limited have gained an international reputation in the field of component durability.

This book is the latest of a number of publications about component durability and defects avoidance.

BPG has recently been commissioned to draft Parts I and III of a new international standard on durability. Part I has now been published and Part III is out for international comment.

Hywel Davies, Chairman, BSI sub-committee for Durability; CIBSE Research Manager