Episode 73

Hello and Welcome to the Part3 with me podcast. 

The show that helps part 3 students jump start into their careers as qualified architects and also to provide refresher episodes for practicing architects. I am your host Maria Skoutari and this week we will talking about Post Occupancy Evaluation. Todays episode meets PC1, PC2 & PC4 of the Part 3 Criteria.

What do we mean when we refer to Post Occupancy Evaluation, can also be referred to sometimes as Building Performance Evaluation:

Post Occupancy Evaluation also known as POE is the assessment of how building performance measures up to the expectations of the team that designed and built it. So its essentially the process of obtaining feedback on a buildings performance in use after its been built and occupied. By measuring building use, energy consumption, maintenance costs and user satisfaction, promotes constant and continuous improvement in the construction industry. Post occupancy evaluations have also been used to assess the effectiveness of the whole project through the quality of the end-product.

POE’s can come in different formats, they can be very light touch reports or more in depth with a number of different techniques utilised depending on the focus of the particular building. They can provide an assessment of how the project brief has been met, feedback from building occupants and scope on how effectively a new or refurbished building operates. More and more professionals now including clients are pushing forward for Post Occupancy Evaluations to be done due to the extensive benefits they offer in providing evidence of a buildings performance which assists in informing future developments and contributing to the UK’s zero carbon targets.

Key Benefits of the POE include:

Reduction of waste, savings in money, time in reducing delays and overspend on future projects, energy and resources. It can also be beneficial in less tangible ways sxuch as wellbeing, identity, community and atmosphere. It provides data to help understand how buildings are performing compared to their design intention, without this data, the construction industry will unknowingly continue to make the same mistakes, wasting time and money. POE also informs building users if their building is energy efficient and reveals if it is being used as intended helping to reduce operational costs and increasing user satisfaction. 

Some barriers that tend to push away the Post Occupancy Evaluation process includes:

Higher up front costs, concerns about risk, effect it may have on insurance, lack of leadership, chosen procurement strategy and lack of education on the how Post Occupancy Evaluation works and why it would be a beneficial process for a project to undergo. There is also a cultural barrier within the architectural profession whereby the POE is seen to be under the responsibility of more technically oriented architects or consultants leading it to be more energy focused neglecting to include items of social and cultural value.

Recent POE’s have shown evidence of the performance gap between design intentions and how buildings actually work in-use in terms of building fabric, services and technologies, user satisfaction and well being. That’s why some publicly funded government projects have started utilising POE’s more and more recognising the value of integrating POE in project contracts as it can help clients meet their requirement to demonstrate value for money, Government departments are especially more open ti using POE’s driven by their Soft Landings Policy a mechanism which ensures a smooth transition from briefing through design and construction phases to the operational phase of a built asset. The WELL Building Standard and Passivhaus both depend upon a POE being undertaken to receive certification and BREEAM, LEED and SKArating offer credit for doing a POE.

To further promote the use of PEO, the RIBA has re-introduced it into the Plan of Work under Stage 7 - In use. Good practice for architects at Stage 7 is to debrief the client and evaluate how the building is performing post occupation and seek feedback from the client on how the architect and other members of the project team performed during the course of the project. This is a good way for the architect to manage their legal risk, because during the debriefing at post-occupation it can give early warning of the presence of defects and also give a warning of a clients dissatisfaction and potential to bring a claim against the architect under the appointment. So the debrief is an opportunity for the architect to manage the clients expectations and to prevent actual and potential problems from turning into claims. Client feedback at post occupancy can also give invaluable business development information for the architect and practice. Architects should inform their PII of their intention to undertake POE services to confirm they are covered to undertake such work. 

So how would the client or architect or project team go about approaching the POE:

For a project to be successful it is important to set out what that success looks like in the form of a set of quality objectives, preferably in a SMART format, i.e specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound objectives that can then feed into the overall client and practice strategy and performance assessment. So there are three key reviews to POE:

• The effectiveness of the procurement process itself
• The performance of the built fabric and construction details
• The operational effectiveness of the building 

So once the objectives have been set, the POE can then be planned and resourced. Responsibilities will need to assessed and agreed between the project team members to establish whose responsibility it is to achieve the targets and who has the right degree of objectivity to assess progress against those targets and when they will do it. It is wise to review previous project POE’s to assist with shaping the project and quality objectives applying lessons learnt from the previous projects. 

A Life Cycle Assessment, should also be examined at the design stage to assess a building’s anticipated fabric and energy performance over its projected life span. So designers should assess and understand the impact of their design decisions over the expected life of a building, they should consider issues like:

• Sustainable materials
• Recycled content
• Retention of existing on site fabric and structure
• Future fabric deterioration and maintenance
• System replacement cycles and the impact on occupiers
• Durability of components and systems in relation to overall life expectancy 
• Future flexibility and capacity for adaption, extension and alteration
• Minimising waste during construction and over the replacement life cycle
• Efficient demolition and disposal
• Optimising the potential for reuse and repurposing of components and systems 
• Impacts of future climate change

POE helps buildings designers, architects, clients and so on design better buildings and promotes thinking past Practical Completion. 

Now, when should the Post Occupancy Evaluation take place:

So Post Occupancy Evaluation can be carried out anytime after the completion of a project, preferably at least a year after use/occupation when the users have settled in. To get the most out of POE some experts suggest revisiting and repeating the process through the life of a building. The data gathered from POE can better enable the industry to demonstrate the operational and social performance based on the total expenditure on the building and it should include an assessment on overall project delivery considering the final project outturn costs.

In terms of how the POE is carried out, there are a range of approaches and methods that can be used which will depend on the particular outcome that has been defines as important to deliver and measure at the briefing stage. The scope and approach of the POE will also depend on the resourcing available in terms of expertise. To get the most value out of POE its important to define how the information will be used and in what format so it can be absorbed into actionable knowledge by the practice, project team and wider profession. In terms of the final outputs, these may vary depending on the scope and funding route of the POE, it can be as previously mentioned, a light touch POE whereby the data is inputted in a simple template document to be used on every project and can be accessed by the whole office as part of a practice quality management system. 

Or you could opt into doing a Diagnostic POE which essentially expands on the light touch POE providing a more detailed review of the building. 

Or you have the more detailed POE, whereby the report may be longer and more comprehensive to provide specific feedback to the project team and client. This can also include key positive and negative findings supported by data presented in maps, graphs, tables, photographs, sketches and so on. And then the report could include any proposed design or management changes to address issues that have been discovered. 

The format could contain:

• Information to compare and analyse the changes made to the estate or property from inception to completion 
• An evaluation of the benefits to learners
• Any economic benefits such as the impact the project has had on the organisations running costs and lessons learnt
• Any material changes made after approval or post-completion

Now in terms of the detailed activities to be carried out for a POE, the RIBA recommends they cover:

• Firstly reviewing of the Project Delivery which entails discussions with the client and design team about their experience 
• Then reviewing the Project Outcomes, which includes reviewing the Strategic Brief, the Business Case if the project meet the clients business needs, risks and opportunities and also reviewing the project Sustainability Aspirations and how these have been met
• Then looking at the Buildings Use and Occupant Behaviour analysing the buildings layout, fabric and detailing by carrying out a thorough walkthrough and noting any changes of use, extensions and equipment. Also analysing the occupants use of the building and systems and their occupation patterns and if any improvised alterations have been made and how much spaces are being over used or underused
• Then following the observations of the occupants, follow up with the occupants feedback by conducting questionnaires, surveys, semi-structured interviews or discussions in order to understand user satisfaction and concerns 
• Then emphasis should be given to the buildings Energy Use, analysing utility invoices and meter readings and if checking them against the design predictions. Then analysing the metering strategy that meters have been correctly commissioned and conducting an equipment survey checking equipment against designs. The next step would be to analyse the embodied carbon by conducting a full life cycle analysis assisting to understand the impact of the building and analysing if a continuous measurement and verification strategy is necessary. 
• The next activity is for Systems, to analyse and review the health and safety strategy, ventilation strategy, heating and cooling strategy, lighting strategy, control strategy and maintenance strategy checking that they are still appropriate are being followed
• Then you have the Environmental Performance, measuring light levels, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustics, air tightness and heat loss to determine everything is as intended
• So once the analysis items have been carried out, a Comparisons assessment should undertaken to identify the intended building use against the actual, the intended design performance predictions against the actual and the intended benchmarking against published datasets in order to understand how the buildings performance is comparable with other buildings.
• And finally report all the findings and assessments to the client, facilities manager, occupants and project teams. 

So once a reports been produced, the information is made available to the relevant parties either through a short reflective review and site visit to share the learning or through a more formalised approach which can be in the form of dedicated CPD sessions or the development of a set of resources on the office intranet and POE workshop with the design team and client.

Data sharing is crucial with POE’s sharing lessons learnt to inform future projects that can be significantly improved with the knowledge gathered through POE. Data sharing can also be done through the professional institutes sharing with their members  educating the construction industry. 

So to sum up what I discussed today:

• The purpose of a POE is to provide a structured evaluation of the process of delivering a project and demonstrating how the project has impacted on any educational provision, property issues or to the organisations current and future finances
• POE delivers important business benefits to both practices and clients, It saves money in the long run, Assists to reduce waste and environmental impact, Improves wellbeing, Develops knowledge, Can prove the value of good design
• POE’s should ideally be carried out at least 12 months post occupation to provide sufficient detail 
• POE’s can take the format of a light touch assessment, a more diagnostic assessment expanding on the light touch report or carrying out a more detailed assessment 
• The costs of POE are tiny compared to the benefits it offers long term 
• To promote more regular uses of POE’s on projects the RIBA has recommended the government adds it as a requirement within the Building Regulations and all data is shared within the industry to avoid making the same mistakes and improving the build environment

Today instead of a scenario I will provide you with a Case Study project provided by the RIBA:

The Case Study is for a commercial retail space. The brief set by the client was to develop an exemplar in sustainable design that embodied the environmental and social commitments set out in their corporate social responsibility initiative. Conceived as a ‘sustainable learning store’ the project was intended to provide a test-bed for the development of best-practice sustainable standards for use across their estate. So the design featured a ‘fabric-first’ approach, based on using building materials, orientation and careful detailing to maximise energy efficiency, the use of low energy ventilation systems and a biomass boiler, water saving measures including a rainwater harvesting system, sustainable urban drainage and increased biodiversity through a living wall and large areas of landscaping.With the client committed to understanding staff and community satisfaction the team also took local groups on guided tours of the site.

In 2013, a year into the building’s occupation, consultants and university researchers undertook a POE study of the store to see how well the building was performing in terms of resource consumption, as well as occupant comfort and satisfaction from the perspectives of a range of different building users. The POE study involved a number of approaches to capture ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ aspects of the design. Meters were integrated into the building design, to monitor electricity, gas consumption and associated CO2 emissions. This was combined with the distribution of Building User Surveys to staff and six focus groups involving 35 participants from the local community, customers, shop floor staff and operational and maintenance staff. The POE research was repeated at another store for comparison. In operational terms the building performed better than predicted, using 42 per cent less energy and producing 40 per cent less carbon than the comparator store. The building scored in the top. 1 per cent for ‘design’ and ‘image to visitors’, the top 7 per cent for improved productivity and the top 11 per cent for comfort when compared to other buildings assessed using the Building User Surveys method. The focus groups highlighted many positives including the living wall and meadow planting, the light and airiness of the space and the building’s dramatic architectural form – in particular the glulam timber roof. The overall quality of the environment was felt to contribute to a better and more enjoyable shopping experience for customers, encouraging people to stay for several hours on each visit. The quality of the building was also seen to enhance the morale of employees. During focus groups staff often said they were ‘proud’ to work there, whilst those at the comparator store were merely ‘satisfied’ – with one staff member saying ‘it must be one of the nicest places in the country to work.’ The building has been heralded as an exemplar in sustainable design in the retail sector, and learning from it is being shared throughout the industry as well as being used within the client ethos to develop design and operational standards for their wider estate.

Key Learnings:

• There is a market for POE among commercial clients who have a long-term stake in their buildings, are keen to understand how they are performing, and how designs can be improved in future commissions.
• POE provides a means through which businesses can evidence their sustainability credentials, thereby strengthening company ethos and brand.
• Clients are interested in understanding both the quantitative aspects of building performance, and the qualitative impacts of a building on how people feel.

So through a rigorous POE process the client has shown how sustainable design makes commercial sense, reducing running costs, strengthening reputation, and creating spaces that are more comfortable and enjoyable for shoppers and workers alike.