Completing the missing link in building design process: Enhancing post-occupancy evaluation method for effective feedback for building performance
Introduction
Rapid advances in manufacturing and materials development, together with developments in structural steelwork, fire protection, safety elevator, computer technologies and other advances in services, have provided additional potential and choices for the designers of new buildings as well as renovations. In contrast, the bewildering variety of materials, products, structural solutions and architectural styles from which to choose and the enormous volume of information related to buildings have become a challenge for design teams. Building designers are also faced with the new pressure to act in a more environmentally responsible manner by reducing the impact of their buildings [1]. Therefore, building performance and its evaluation have earned increased attention in recent years, particularly as applied to newly constructed or major renovated green buildings [2], [3], [4], [5]. As some new buildings are charged with performing poorly in meeting user needs, environmental performance and economic feasibility [6], the use of new materials, building techniques and ‘innovative’ design strategies requires some measure of their performance in practice [7]. Green buildings can contribute substantial energy savings, but further work needs to be performed to ensure more consistent success [8]. Otherwise, ‘credibility gaps’ arise because few people who design buildings go on to monitor and assess their performance after occupation. As a result, good cases remain unnoticed, or the same mistakes are repeated [9]. Architects frequently fail to learn straightforward lessons from completed projects and end up repeating mistakes that could easily be avoided [10]. In addition, it is very difficult for designers to evaluate their own designs objectively, formulating the effects of the designed space on their users [11]. With regard to these concerns, there is a mismatch between expectations for energy efficiency and outcomes [12]. In other words, a well-known gap exists between the predicted and actual environmental performances of built infrastructure [13].
There is a current resurgent interest in the use of major feedback loops to narrow this gap. Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) has the potential to lead to a better understanding of how we can complete feedback loops in the building design process. If POE can be completed, it would be possible to do the following:
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enhance continuous improvement in the design process through ‘feedforward’ in briefing. Real information provided with a proper POE on which to base decisions is key to informing and improving the next project [14];
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support occupant satisfaction and productivity by validating occupants' real needs, particularly in relation to managing services to suit occupants;
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increase organizational efficiency by reducing ownership/operational expenses and the waste of space and energy; and
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use benchmarking as a platform for sustainable development for future projects through the lesson-learn method.
Although POE can help drive the building procurement process forward [15], the findings do not seem to match the rhetoric; in other words, POE is not used effectively in practice. Roberts [16] shared findings of a survey of 160 organizations; only 7% of these organizations surveyed their buildings at the end of 3 years. Several researchers went on to investigate the reasons for the reluctance of organizations to perform such studies. According to Vischer [17], for those who will pay for POE and are responsible for commissioning, defending professional territory against judgment, time, and a lack of a particular technique or tool associated with POE studies represent significant barriers. Zimmerman & Martin [14] enumerated the barriers to implementing POE as fragmented incentives and benefits within the procurement and operation processes, a lack of agreed upon and reliable indicators, potential liability for owners, exclusion from current delivery expectations, and exclusion from professional curricula. Gann et al. [18], noted that the proposed methods cannot close the loop between users and other stakeholders because people who have had POE training are primarily social designers or researchers, who are not part of the standard facility delivery team [14]. Are they really professionally responsible for undertaking these evaluations?
Designers almost never review the outcomes of their design decisions. Furthermore, planning for POEs is not included as part of the typical process, and no time or funding is budgeted to perform these activities [14]. Architects and engineers usually leave the building exactly the same moment when the occupants move in. This is the reason why they have to rely on descriptions of the users' needs and actions instead of observing them directly [19]. Building standards and technical forms are preferred more often than direct evaluations of buildings in use. For instance, the current definition of acceptable thermal ‘comfort’ is based on the Predicted Mean Vote model, which is calculated with (i) indoor environmental parameters such as the air temperature and mean radiant temperature, air movement, and humidity and (ii) personal parameters such as metabolic rate, clothing insulation. However, user behavior – either within or outside the expected range – is not a fixed entity; rather, it is constantly influenced by a broad variety of variables, many of which are directly related to the specific building and its installations [19]. Disregarding differences in occupant satisfaction and perceptions of comfort, this physical approach eliminates the contribution of users to building design, management and operation: “the goal is buildings that perform to a prescribed set of narrowly defined standards, independent of the dynamic of inhabitants …. Permitting occupants a higher level of control is perceived as a risk that could diminish building system optimization and increase building owners' and management's economic and labor costs were occupants to make uninformed and thus wasteful decisions” [20]. The elastic concepts of comfort or producing indoor environments that are culturally satisfactory rather than technically optimal require the establishment of new definitions of risk and failure, question methods, standards, and procedures [21].
The evaluation of a building almost immediately, i.e., starting from the day of its occupation, could significantly enhance the quality of user representations in the building. Such evaluation also provides the opportunity for all parties to learn from past mistakes or deficiencies and promote performance improvement for future buildings [22]. Briefly, overlooking POE as a mechanism for linking feedback on new buildings with the pre-design decision making process and common problems in the construction sector is caused by the separation of design from production, ownership and use [18]. Considering the impact of these issues, this study was undertaken with the intention to find possible reasons explaining the missing link of “building performance feedback” and present a spatial mapping method in POE to close the building performance feedback loop in the building design process.
Section snippets
Existing POE methods and techniques
Since dynamic multidimensional structure of users' behaviors, demands and needs are variable and user satisfaction and performance, which consist of both objective and subjective components, make these studies complicated. Factors such as the user's behaviors, the degree to which activities are realized, the user's psychological needs and his/her cultural, economic and educational statuses have direct or indirect impacts upon a building's energy performance [23], [24]. Whereas some indicators
New advancements in POE studies
Traditional POE studies are generally conducted with methods such as using questionnaires, face-to-face interviews and walk-throughs. The current POE approaches remain primarily concerned with quantifying the aspects of occupants' behaviors that are attributed to energy consumption and focus narrowly on ambient environment quality, e.g., thermal, indoor air quality, and lighting under the effect of the notion of “green”, which is considered to be front and center among design and operation
How to integrate stakeholders into the POE process
At the beginning of 21st century, architectural design became more complex. The decision making process began to involve multidisciplinary input from many professionals and thoughts such as improving the built environment, encouraging economic activity and limiting environmental impact. The complexity of architectural design and connected building process is generated by several stakeholders from different backgrounds and professional expertise and the interaction among them. A building is not
Bringing to light the POEs kept in three ring folders - integrating POEs with building information modeling
New buildings are complex and becoming even more so; thus, traditional and new sources of data are developing rapidly. Engagement with these data is fundamentally changing the way we make, occupy, manage, and remake space [100]. To achieve an environmentally efficient building, sharing the data gathered from POEs would be beneficial to determine the successes and flaws in high-performance buildings [101]. In theory, the results of POEs are analyzed with complex methods, which are not easily
BIM & GIS-Based POE (spatial mapping) method
Visualizing the data aggregated from POE studies, building a link with BIM tools, and mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, as in POE studies, present ongoing problems. The proposed method not only builds a link with BIM tools but also overcomes this problem by combining data-collecting and data-presenting methods with the use of geographic information system (GIS) technology (Fig. 3). GIS integrates hardware, software, and data for capturing, managing, analyzing, and displaying all
Discussion
While energy-efficient and economic building designs continue to be a topical issue, the process maximizing the efficiency of occupants and effectively managing resources with minimum life costs (according to European Intelligent Building Group-EIBG) has drawn much attention. An increasing number of new or renovated buildings (that are promoted as being ‘energy efficient’, ‘green' or ‘intelligent’) provide a productive and cost-effective environment. These buildings have complex and rapidly
Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute for this research. Thanks to William Higgins, Master of Science student in the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis, Cornell University, for his contribution during POE data collection.
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