Building post occupancy evaluation frame work

Abstract

Buildings facilitate organizational performance by creating a comfortable and stable internal environment for the occupants. Traditionally, micro level criteria have been used by the building professionals in understanding how well a building is satisfying user or functional requirements. However ever increasing expectations and requirements of building occupiers and owners for cost effective and value added facilities have lead the global industries towards the concept of total building performance. Among the variety of Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) techniques available in the industry, the application of Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) has been justified throughout the research as a successful BPE technique. However, lacking a generic framework in order to carry out a POE has prevented gaining optimum benefits of POE. Thus, this paper presents a generic framework for POE using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) tool to fill this research gap. Questionnaire survey approach was used to identify BPE criteria and building performance indicators, and to develop the conceptual and generic POE frameworks. Major survey findings revealed that internal environmental comfort as the most important criterion and three times more important than energy performance and sustainability parameters which obtained least importance level. Visual comfort and indoor environmental quality indicators were most significant building performance indicators in evaluating the building performance using POE. POE conducted in a systematic way using the developed framework will allow fine-tuning a facility and the lessons learned from the failures and successes of BP can applied to the design of future buildings.