Outsourcing in Maintenance Management 55 4 OUTSOURCING IN MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT Shahabudin Abdullah Chong Li Ken INTRODUCTION Maintenance is an important activity for all types of building. Without proper and organised maintenance, a building will experience damages in a short period of time. This situation will reduce the life time of that particular building. Damages or disfigurements within a building must be repaired as soon as possible to prevent further damages to happen. Furthermore, the maintenance of building needs to be carried out from time so that the quality of the building is guaranteed and achieve the standards that have been determined (Sumantri, 2000). An effective management of maintenance system is needed for the planning of the maintenance works. This is because maintenance is becoming more important these days due to the increasing complexity of building facilities and increasing needs of consumers through time. An organised and systematic planning of maintenance works is needed for the building to always be in a good, comfortable and safe condition to be used (Najib, 2002).