Post Occupancy Evaluation towards Indoor Environment Improvement in Malaysia’s Office Buildings

Natasha Khalil,Husrul Nizam Husin

doi:10.5539/jsd.v2n1p186

Abstract

The indoor environmental factors considered in office building must be determined in order to meet user’s requirement. Disruption of indoor environment may constitute to reduce occupants’ efficiency and work productivity. Therefore, Post-occupancy Evaluation (POE) is a prominent tool that able to indicate satisfaction and comfort level needs by building occupants as lessons learned to identify problems in indoor environment. By using occupants as benchmark of evaluation, the potential of improving the indoor environment in buildings is enormous. With relation to the title, the main purpose of this study is to provide recommendation to improve quality of indoor environment in office building, by analytical study on the level of effort and phases of conducting POE and determining occupant’s satisfaction level. The survey used in conjunction with physical measurements to determine how environmental factors affect occupants’ perceived comfort and productivity levels, and a benchmarking example of using the survey to establish how new buildings are meeting a client’s design objectives. It is recommended that the application of POE is prioritized as strategic level decision making and emphasized as continuous activity in environmental evaluation.

Highlights

In the current situation where people concerns about sustainability environment, building occupants seek to obtain comfort and efficiency in their office
It can be concluded that Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) provides significant impact on creating change in terms of improving building environment in two ways
It is suggested that POE should be implemented as a real practice in Malaysia as benchmarking towards sustainable environment

Summary

Introduction

In the current situation where people concerns about sustainability environment, building occupants seek to obtain comfort and efficiency in their office. Occupants demand to have priority in terms of comfortability to use and utilize the facilities and services as it must be fit for purpose of the user. Is the building element and facilities fit for the user’s purpose and well function? Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is one of strategic implementation of analysis on building sustainability after occupancy. POE has been defined by Zimring and Reizenstein (1980) as examination of the effectiveness for human users of occupied design environment. Information of the building’s condition is gained by reviewing what the occupants’ feel and how they response to their needs by use and occupy the building. Among the benefits gathered from POE is it helps to identify successful design features to repeat (Watson,2003), identify problems to mitigate or reduce, improve building environment and performance (Vischer,2002; Hewitt et al, 2005), fine tune completed buildings, identify redundant or unnecessary building features, empower users to negotiate building issues and others

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