Learning from Our Buildings A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation (2001) / Chapter Skim
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3 Post-Occupancy Evaluation: A Multifaceted Tool for Building Improvement
3 Post-Occupancy Evaluation: A Multifaceted Tool for Building Improvement
Pages 23-34
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From page 23... ...
For an institutional owner-manager of real estate (government agencies, large quasi-government organizations) , POE studies can provide feedback on occupant satisfaction, on building performance, and on operating costs and management practices.
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From page 24... ...
In the current context of new work patterns, changing office technology, and a more strategic approach to workspace planning, POE studies are finding a potentially valuable role in guiding companies toward more informed decision-making about office space. CURRENT STATUS OF POE POE has evolved from early efforts at environmental evaluation that focused on the housing needs of disadvantaged groups and efforts to improve environmental quality in government-subsidized housing.
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From page 25... ...
A technique for assessing user comfort was one tool that emerged out of the Canadian effort and has since been widely implemented in private industry (Dillon and Vischer, 1988~. An extensive survey of users was initiated in some eight government buildings in Canadian cities, and a major data analysis effort aimed to integrate the feedback from users with data collected from instruments measuring indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting and acoustic conditions, and energy performance.
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From page 26... ...
Linking POE with Pre-Design Programming One of the most appealing reasons to perform POE is to be able to inform building decision-making in the early stages of a new project. POE studies target user evaluation of an existing space where users are destined to occupy a new space that is being planned.
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From page 27... ...
This should not be taken to mean that such efforts are futile; on the contrary, they are valiant and should be continued, if only to make us question the basic irrationality of the present building creation process. POE in Strategic Space Planning There is a clear difference between attempts to feed POE study results into pre-design decision-making on a routine basis, such as those described above, and using POE in strategic space planning.
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From page 28... ...
Having a short, standardized questionnaire to compare employee perceptions before and after a workspace change is a significant tool for POE studies. BIU assessment has been used successfully in strategic space planning for a range of companies, including Bell Sygma, Reuters, Boston Financial Group, and GTE Government Systems.
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From page 29... ...
This may mean simplifying the elaborate social science approach favored by researchers and investing in a test initiative to implement and test an asset management approach to POE in the context of the real estate industry so as to demonstrate how feedback from users can both be collected easily and enhance real estate decision-making. POE also seems to have a natural place in strategic space planning and could be developed for use by a
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From page 30... ...
Involving users in new workspace planning is necessary for any successful change initiative, and POE is one of the tools available to this end. Finally, in spite of the ground-breaking efforts by some large organizations to build POE techniques into their building management activities, it is curious that large property management firms are rarely known to use POEs for building diagnostic purposes or for improving services to tenants.
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From page 31... ...
These are but a few of the factors that mean that building design is not controlled by any one person or agency and that therefore a clear notion of a project's design ideas and intentions for the purpose of POE is difficult to identify. The author's own experience of highly participatory design processes has provided first-hand experience of the convoluted, political, and anything-but-linear decision-making process that causes a building to be what it ultimately is.
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From page 32... ...
In others, the information is directed to designers to help them make better design decisions on a specific project or generically with regard to a building type. In some cases, building users are informed regarding the results of a POE in which they were involved, as a way of involving them in planning change and finding ways of improving the environment.
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From page 33... ...
5. Efforts to combine instrument data collection and surveys of building users can be costly, because large amounts of data are generated without yielding much additional useful information.
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From page 34... ...
. Using occupancy feedback to monitor indoor air quality.
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