Post occupancy evaluation helps create successful buildings
Nigel Oseland, AMA Alexi Marmot Associates
The UK’s Constructing Excellence is currently promoting their three pillars philosophy of: briefing, evidence based design and post occupancy evaluation (POE). British Council of Offices (BCO)’s recent Guide to Post Occupancy Evaluation (2007) stressed the importance of gathering occupant feedback in buildings. In particular, POE is used to:
· assess the success of the project - identify lessons learned, feed forward to new projects;
· inform to the design process - use as a briefing tool to identify business and end-user needs;
· input to change management – an easy means to consult all users.
The BCO guide explains what a POE consists of and provides guidance on how to conduct a POE. For those preferring off-the-shelf products, the guide describes recognised POE systems;
Alexi Marmot Association (AMA)’s WorkWare is one such system. WorkWare is a suite of five standardised evaluation tools which have been developed and refined since 1990 and consists of: occupant questionnaire, space audit, space occupancy survey (SOS), interviews, and workshops.
The data collected through WorkWare is captured in a database that now contains data from more than 260 buildings representing 60,000 occupants. The accumulated data allows the benchmarking and tracking of key data on how buildings are perceived and used. The main benchmarks include staff perceptions, space metrics (such as occupational density, tenant efficiency, percentage cellularisation), level of storage, space utilisation and share ratios, work activities (such as number of meetings and email traffic) and environmental attitude.
The WorkWare database shows that, as might be expected, people are far more satisfied on average (by 23%) after moving to a new or refurbished space. Although satisfaction overall is improving as a result of good briefing and design, there are nevertheless factors such as temperature, ventilation, noise, privacy (sometimes termed the hygiene factors) which are still causes of dissatisfaction. In contrast, modern buildings generally offer better daylight, meeting spaces and social interaction zones. However, to ensure our buildings maximise the performance of the occupying organisations we need to ensure that the hygiene factors are resolved.
Unexpectedly AMA found that post-move satisfaction is on average higher (by 12%) in corporate buildings compared to government ones. It is unclear whether this finding is due to the quality of the buildings, or due to differences in staff expectations, or related to the change management programme.
The utilisation survey results shows that two-thirds of the buildings studied have desk utilisation rates below 60%. Indicating there is clearly scope for introducing desk sharing in most types of organisations to increase the utilisation. Contrary to what might be expected, it is often found that in organisations where flexible working has been introduced that the utilisation rate often remains between 50-60%. This suggests that once the staff understand the principles of new ways of working, and are provided with the tools to work flexibly, they are quick to adapt their workstyle and take advantage of not having to work in the office.
Using POE is important in understanding how buildings are performing. However, it should be recognised that the success of a building depends upon factors other than the physical design, such as how the building is used, organisational factors, user education and occupant expectations.