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Passive house. LEED Platinum. Residential Building Challenges. These are currently the most stringent building standards in the world and are increasingly seen by the property industry as a way to meet carbon emissions rules and ESG targets. Whenever a building with highly publicized sustainable elements is completed, city officials applaud, industry and media take notice, and the project’s developers and designers may even win awards. But what happens after that?
Once the project is complete and residents or office staff move in, does the building perform to high expectations and standards? These are questions that architects are concerned about now more than ever. Rather than just delivering a project, the construction industry should collect and consider post-occupancy data as it can provide important insights into building performance. But some in the industry believe further improvements are needed in this area.
The Integral Building Design Guide describes the practice of researching a building after its completion as “lessons learned,” a concept common in the design and development world. Once the building is constructed, the parties involved revisit the project to find out what worked and what didn’t. “Every lesson learned makes a building more successful,” the organization writes. The process of studying the good and the bad and identifying lessons learned is also often called post-occupancy evaluation (POE).
The typical process for a POE is for the property owner to hire an outside firm or expert who was not involved in the original design or construction to evaluate what went right and what went wrong after occupancy. This process usually begins after the building is occupied, through at least one (if not multiple) heating and cooling cycles. POE teams typically evaluate a building through a series of walk-throughs and inspections, during which they observe systems, record performance indicators, and interview building occupants, employees, visitors, and professionals involved in designing and developing the property . The goal is to gather valuable information that will help buildings perform better and reduce future costs at all levels, including personnel costs, utility costs, maintenance costs and mechanical costs.
A thorough evaluation of a building after it opens seems like a no-brainer. After all, finding ways to reduce costs is in everyone’s interest.However, somewhat ironically, although POE can reduce the operating costs of a building, it Do POE is the reason why they can’t complete their mission. “No one wants to pay for it,” Deborah Moelis, principal and founding member of Handel Architects in New York, said of post-occupancy studies. “It’s also very difficult to collect data in a meaningful way.” Much of the data collected tends to become jumbled, and then the process of putting it into systems to output the required data adds cost. Mollis said she has tried unsuccessfully to get funding to help with the effort. She is also looking for partner universities to help conduct post-movement data collection studies. “It had to be codified because no one was doing it, and I didn’t even know enough about the buildings I was designing,” she said.
Companies have been conducting formal post-construction appraisals since the 1960s, but surprisingly, especially considering the value of these appraisals, they are uncommon in the United States. However, this practice has recently received increased attention due to the increasing number of developers building green standards and how the real estate industry can become data-centric. Now, new technologies are emerging that can help make these assessments faster and at a lower cost.
Portland-based architecture firm ZGF Architects has been involved in a number of highly sustainable and energy-efficient projects, including the first phase of Amazon’s HQ2 campus and the PAE Living Building, considered the largest commercial urban living building in the world. As part of its work, ZGF has developed a customized iPad app for the POE process and is exploring machine learning. Global architecture firm IA Interior Architects created its in-house app with the help of software developers and found that teams using the app during observations were able to cut the time needed to collect data in half. The technology will be used to identify items from photos of each table, rather than having observers manually count and record tabletop equipment and configurations.
But like all uses of artificial intelligence, there are limits to its effectiveness. “Technology offers a lot of ‘what,’ but you don’t always understand the ‘why,'” says Sarah Bird, workplace strategist and change management consultant at IA Interior Architects. “You need to ask questions to get answers to ‘why’ questions.”
Seattle-based construction firm LMN developed a tool called PODD, or Post-Occupancy Data Device. Placed in the building upon completion of construction, the small device is up and running to monitor and record seven different indicators – carbon dioxide levels, carbon monoxide levels, air temperature and humidity, light, sound levels and radiant temperature. The data collected by PODD can be used to help companies understand how well buildings are operating and whether building occupants are comfortable. LMN designer Plamena Milusheva said conducting post-occupancy studies can be addressed early to ensure customers are involved, and “the sooner, the better.” Talking about this issue at the outset of project negotiations can help the client understand that the architect’s investment is to help the building operate at peak performance, not just when the building is completed, but long after it is completed.
The next generation of architecture will be defined by sustainability. Stricter laws on carbon emissions, government incentives for clean energy and energy-efficient upgrades, and the rise of green financing options are pushing building developers to build greener and more sustainable buildings than ever before. Architects and designers play a huge role in creating sustainable buildings and have been pushing the boundaries of building performance as more progress is made in creating net-zero and Passive House structures. By studying how a building performs after occupancy, architects and the entire team behind the building can glean valuable insights into what is working and what needs improvement. This is likely to lead to more progress in sustainability as more architects create new technology tools designed to streamline the process and reduce the time required to conduct assessments.
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