Selecting maintenance practices based on environmental criteria: a comparative analysis of theory and practice in the public transport sector in UAE/DUBAI

Maintenance has a critical role in the transportation industry, as it is the guarantee for public transportation in providing continuous and safe services. The current study aims to explore the maintenance practices employed by public transport sector and investigate the environmental impact of the common maintenance practices. A comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art literature related to maintenance practices and environmental sustainability key performance indicators was conducted. Then interviews with experts and practitioners in the buses maintenance domain were conducted. After that, a cross-sectional survey to validate the literature and interview findings was performed among a sample of 132 bus maintenance practitioners working in Dubai transport sector. The results revealed that preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, and condition based maintenance are the most commonly practiced in bus maintenance. Furthermore, it was found that waste, noise, and emission measures should be considered while selecting the maintenance practices. Eventually, the results exhibited that Preventive Maintenance is the right maintenance practice when considering waste and noise pollution as environmental selection criteria. On the other hand, Corrective Maintenance is the suitable maintenance practice when considering the emissions as environmental selection criteria. It is very important to identify the most important environmental criteria when selecting the right maintenance practice. It is obvious that the selection of the proper maintenance practice should be aligned with the environmental sustainability requirements. We consider this new practice, that is to say, the environmental sustainability based maintenance as a unique maintenance strategy that can be considered not only in automotive maintenance, but also in different contexts involved in maintenance phase of different physical assets. It is recommended that this study be extended to study other sustainability aspects of maintenance practices such as the financial aspect and service availability aspect in addition to study other transportation modes such as taxi vehicles, metro, and marine vessels.