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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
LEARNING FROM OUR BUILDINGS
A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
Federal Facilities Council Technical Report No. 145
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C.
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20418
NOTICE
The Federal Facilities Council (FFC) is a continuing activity of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council (NRC). The purpose of the FFC is to promote continuing cooperation among the sponsoring federal agencies and between the agencies and other elements of the building community in order to advance building science and technology—particularly with regard to the design, construction, acquisition, evaluation, and operation of federal facilities. The following agencies sponsor the FFC:
Department of the Air Force, Office of the Civil Engineer
Department of the Air Force, Air National Guard
Department of the Army, Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management
Department of Defense, Federal Facilities Directorate
Department of Energy
Department of the Interior, Office of Managing Risk and Public Safety
Department of the Navy, Naval Facilities Engineering Command
Department of State, Office of Overseas Buildings Operations
Department of Transportation, U.S. Coast Guard
Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration
Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Facilities Management
Food and Drug Administration
General Services Administration, Public Buildings Service
Indian Health Service
International Broadcasting Bureau
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Facilities Engineering Division
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institutes of Health
National Science Foundation
Smithsonian Institution, Facilities Engineering and Operations
U.S. Postal Service, Engineering Division
As part of its activities, the FFC periodically publishes reports that have been prepared by committees of government employees. Because these committees are not appointed by the NRC, they do not make recommendations, and their reports are considered FFC publications rather than NRC publications.
For additional information on the FFC program and its reports, visit the Web site at <http://www4.nationalacademies.org/cets/ffc.nsf> or write to Director, Federal Facilities Council, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., HA-274, Washington, DC 20418 or call 202-334-3374.
Printed in the United States of America
2001
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
FEDERAL FACILITIES COUNCIL
Chair
Henry J. Hatch, U.S. Army (Retired)
Vice Chair
William Brubaker, Director,
Facilities Engineering and Operations, Smithsonian Institution
Members
Walter Borys,
Operations and Maintenance Division, International Broadcasting Bureau
John Bower, MILCON Program Manager,
U.S. Air Force
Peter Chang,
Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems, National Science Foundation
Tony Clifford, Director,
Division of Engineering Services, National Institutes of Health
Jose Cuzmé, Director,
Division of Facilities Planning and Construction, Indian Health Service
David Eakin, Chief Engineer,
Office of the Chief Architect, Public Buildings Service, General Services Administration
James Hill, Deputy Director,
Building and Fire Research Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology
John Irby, Director,
Federal Facilities Directorate, U.S. Department of Defense
L. Michael Kaas, Director,
Office of Managing Risk and Public Safety, U.S. Department of the Interior
Joe McCarty, Engineering Team Leader,
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
William Miner, Acting Director,
Building Design and Engineering, Office of Overseas Buildings Operations, U.S. Department of State
William Morrison, Chief,
Structures Branch, Facilities Division, Air National Guard
Get Moy, Chief Engineer and Director,
Planning and Engineering Support, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, U.S. Navy
Robert Neary, Jr., Associate Facilities Management Officer,
Office of Facilities Management, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Juaida Norell,
Airways Support Division, Federal Aviation Administration
Wade Raines,
Maintenance and Policies Programs, Engineering Division, U.S. Postal Service
James Rispoli, Director,
Engineering and Construction Management Office, U.S. Department of Energy
William Stamper, Senior Program Manager,
Facilities Engineering Division, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Stan Walker, Division Chief,
Shore Facilities Capital Asset Management, U.S. Coast Guard
Staff
Richard Little, Director,
Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment (BICE)
Lynda Stanley, Director,
Federal Facilities Council
Michael Cohn, Program Officer,
BICE
Kimberly Goldberg, Administrative Associate,
BICE
Nicole Longshore, Project Assistant,
BICE
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
Preface
At the most fundamental level, the purpose of a building is to provide shelter for activities that could not be carried out as effectively, or carried out at all, in the natural environment. Buildings are designed and constructed to (1) protect people and equipment from elements such as wind, rain, snow, and heat; (2) provide interior space whose configuration, furnishings, and environment (temperature, humidity, noise, light, air quality, materials) are suited to the activities that take place within; and (3) provide the infrastructure— water, electricity, waste disposal systems, fire suppression—necessary to carry out activities in a safe environment.
Today, people and organizations have even higher expectations for buildings. Owners expect that their investments will result in buildings that support their business lines or missions by enhancing worker productivity, profits, and image; that are sustainable, accessible, adaptable to new uses, energy efficient, and cost-effective to build and to maintain; and that meet the needs of their clients. Users expect that buildings will be functional, comfortable, and safe and will not impair their health. A building’s performance is its capacity to meet any or all of these expectations.
Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is a process for evaluating a building’s performance once it is occupied. It is based on the idea that finding out about users’ needs by systematically assessing human response to buildings and other designed spaces is a legitimate aim of building research. Early efforts at POE focused on housing needs of disadvantaged groups to improve environmental quality in government-subsidized housing. The process was later applied to other government facilities such as military housing, hospitals, prisons, and courthouses. POE began to be used for office buildings and other commercial real estate in the mid-1980s and continues to be used for a variety of facility types today.
As POE has been applied to a larger range of building types and as expectations for buildings have evolved, POE has come to mean any and all activities that originate out of an interest in learning how a building performs once it is built, including whether and how well it has met expectations and how satisfied building users are with the environment that has been created. Although POEs are still focused on determining user comfort and satisfaction, organizations are attempting to find ways to use the information gathered to support more informed decision-making about space and building investments during the programming, design, construction, and operation phases of a facility’s life cycle. To do this, organizations need to establish design criteria, databases or other methods for compiling lessons from POEs and for disseminating those lessons throughout the organization, from senior executives to midlevel managers, project managers, consultants, and clients.
The federal government is the United States’ largest owner of facilities, with approximately 500,000 facilities worldwide. Federal agencies that own, use, or provide facilities have a significant interest in optimizing their performance. The General Services Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Naval Facilities Engineering Command, U.S. Postal Service, State Department, and Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts have been leaders in the development and practice of POEs. They and other federal agencies are trying to find ways to share information about effective
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
processes for conducting POEs, to capture and disseminate lessons learned, and to increase the value that POEs add to the facility acquisition process.
The Federal Facilities Council (FFC) is a cooperative association of 21 federal agencies with interests and responsibilities for large inventories of buildings. The FFC is a continuing activity of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment of the National Research Council (NRC), the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. In 1986, the FFC requested that the NRC appoint a committee to examine the field and propose ways by which the POE process could be improved to better serve public and private sector organizations. The resulting report, Post-Occupancy Evaluation Practices in the Building Process: Opportunities for Improvement, proposed a broader view of POEs—from being simply the end phase of a building project to being an integral part of the entire building process. The authoring committee recommended a series of actions related to policy, procedures, and innovative technologies and techniques to achieve that broader view.
In 2000, the FFC funded a second study to look at the state of the practice of POEs and lessons-learned programs among federal agencies and in private, public, and academic organizations both here and abroad. The sponsor agencies specifically wanted to determine whether and how information gathered during POE processes could be used to help inform decisions made in the programming, budgeting, design, construction, and operation phases of facility acquisition in a useful and timely way. To complete this study, the FFC commissioned a set of papers by recognized experts in this field, conducted a survey of selected federal agencies with POE programs, and held a forum at the National Academy of Sciences on March 13, 2001, to address these issues. This report is the result of those efforts.
Within the context of a rapidly changing building industry and the introduction of new specialty fields and technologies into the building process and new design objectives for buildings that are sustainable, healthy, and productivity enhancing, and with ever-greater demands on limited resources, POE constitutes a potentially vital contribution in the effort to maintain quality assurance. Within the federal government, the downsizing of in-house facilities engineering organizations, the increased outsourcing of design and construction functions, and the loss of in-house technical expertise, all underscore the need for a strong capability to capture and disseminate lessons learned as part of a dynamic project delivery process. We hope this report will help federal agencies and other organizations to enhance those capabilities.
Lynda Stanley
Director, Federal Facilities Council
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
Contents
1
OVERVIEW: A SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
1
Introduction,
1
Organization of This Report,
1
Summary of Findings,
2
References,
8
2
THE EVOLUTION OF POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION: TOWARD BUILDING PERFORMANCE AND UNIVERSAL DESIGN EVALUATION
Wolfgang Preiser, Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
9
Post-Occupancy Evaluation: An Overview,
9
Types of Evaluation for Building Projects,
10
Purposes of POEs,
11
Types of POEs,
11
Benefits, Uses, and Costs of POEs,
12
An Integrative Framework for Building Performance Evaluations,
13
Universal Design Evaluation,
15
Universal Design Performance,
15
Performance Levels,
16
Toward Universal Design Evaluation,
19
Possible Strategies for Universal Design Evaluation,
20
Education and Training in Universal Design Evaluation Techniques,
21
Conclusions,
21
About the Author,
21
References,
22
3
POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION: A MULTIFACETED TOOL FOR BUILDING IMPROVEMENT
Jacqueline Vischer, Ph.D., University of Montreal
23
What Is Post-Occupancy Evaluation?,
23
The Pros and Cons of POE,
23
Current Status of POE,
24
Best Practices,
29
Managing POE Information,
30
The Future of POE: Recommendations for an Unobtrusive POE Process ,
32
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Learning from Our Buildings: A State-of-the-Practice Summary of Post-Occupancy Evaluation
About the Author,
33
References,
34
4
POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION PROCESSES IN SIX FEDERAL AGENCIES
35
Survey Questions,
35
Summary of Findings,
36
Descriptions of POE Programs,
37
5
POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
Craig Zimring, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, and Thierry Rosenheck, Office of Overseas Buildings Operations, U.S. Department of State
42
Brief Introduction to Post-Occupancy Evaluation,
44
Do Organizations Do POE-Enabled Organizational Learning?,
45
Ways to Create the Appropriate Conditions for Learning Through POE,
46
Creating a Knowledge Base for Building Delivery and Management,
49
Building on Existing Evaluations,
50
Lessons from POE Programs: Enhancing Organizational Learning,
51
About the Authors,
52
References,
52
6
THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY FOR BUILDING PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS
Audrey Kaplan, Workplace Diagnostics Ltd.
54
Introduction,
54
Cybersurveys,
55
Response Rate,
56
Sampling,
56
Lessons Learned,
56
Conclusions and Discussion,
58
About the Author,
59
References,
59
APPENDIXES
A FUNCTIONALITY AND SERVICEABILITY STANDARDS: TOOLS FOR STATING FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS AND FOR EVALUATING FACILITIES
Francoise Szigeti and Gerald Davis, International Centre for Facilities
63
B A BALANCED SCORECARD APPROACH TO POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION: USING THE TOOLS OF BUSINESS TO EVALUATE FACILITIES
Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D., J.H. Heerwagen and Associates
79
C Supplemental Information to Chapter 3
88
D Supplemental Information to Chapter 4
95
E Supplemental Information to Chapter 6
116
F Chapter 5 from Post-Occupancy Evaluation Practices in the Building Process: Opportunities for Improvement
119
BIBLIOGRAPHY
126