Page 20B—
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
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September 2-September 15, 2015
I
magine you’re a first grader
at the beginning of the
school year. You hear from
some older students that the
school restrooms are haunted,
and that lost souls from beyond
the grave like to play with the
lights. How eager are you to use
the restrooms, especially alone?
The lost souls in this case were
actually lighting control sensors
causing a delay in the lights
turning on when kids entered the
space.
This tale of restroom
poltergeists comes from a post-
occupancy evaluation conducted
by M.E. Group at a renovated,
high-performance elementary
school in New Mexico. As a result
of the teasing from older students,
facilitated by the lighting controls,
the younger students avoided
using the restroom or rushed
through the process, resulting in
the following performance, health
and well-being issues:
• Concentration problems in
the classroom (from dread and
delay of using the restroom);
• Hygiene issues (from rushing
through the process); and
• Potential health problems
(from consistently holding it
longer than they should).
This example falls in line with
a significant amount of research
demonstrating even green, high-
performance facilities often fail
to meet design intent in varying
ways, from energy consumption to
impacts on occupant productivity
and health. And with the average
annual cost for personnel ranging
from 120 to 240 times the annual
facility energy costs, even a
fraction of a percentage change in
productivity and health can dwarf
any associated changes in utility
costs.
This is demonstrated by M.E.
Group’s retro-commissioning
and human factors evaluation
of the Conrad Duberstein U.S.
Post Office and Bankruptcy
Courthouse in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Proposed energy conservation
measures were estimated to
save approximately $872,000 in
operational costs annually, with
a simple payback of 10 ½ years.
Considering just a limited number
of indoor environmental quality
impacts, those same measures
were conservatively estimated to
result in productivity and health
savings of $3.57 million annually,
reducing the simple payback to
2.1 years.
Nor are benefits limited
to energy use and occupant
productivity and health. Studies
have shown that certified green
buildings meeting occupant needs
command rent price rates 25
percent greater and occupancy
rates 23 percent greater than
conventional, code-compliant
unrated office buildings. This
growing realization of the
importance of occupant factors
has been one of the driving forces
behind the development of the
WELL Building Standard and
other efforts to assess and improve
our built environments’ impacts
on productivity, health and
general well-being.
However, as these examples
demonstrate, improvement hinges
on evaluations of some form to
verify if facilities are performing
per design intent. Out of 14 POEs
we conducted, an average of 105
lessons learned resulted from
each POE. Many were related to
performance not meeting design
intent with impacts on occupant
productivity, health and well-
being.
Evaluations must also be
comprehensive in that they focus
on both the building and the
occupant. Otherwise we miss
the complete picture and lose
the opportunity to maximize
both building performance and
occupant productivity, health and
well-being.
To exemplify this, picture a
shiny new high school with large
expanses of exterior/interior
glazing flooding daylight into
spaces and exposing beautiful
outdoor scenes for the teachers
and students within. The media
center depicted has internal
glazing at an upper level, allowing
views to the lower ground level, as
well as beyond through exterior
glazing. While this design allows
substantial daylight penetration
and view access, the space’s
configuration also allows those
at the ground level to see up
the skirts of those standing next
to the glass on the upper level.
Beyond the embarrassment, this
exacerbates potential conflicts
surrounding gender and bullying,
including sexual harassment, and
helps foster disrespect for teachers
and administrators among
students.
A focus on the occupant as
part of the POE process, through
methods such as in-context
interviews and observations,
facilitated the discovery of this
issue. It’s also possible that
involving some type of behavioral/
human factors professional during
planning and early design would
have seen this and suggested
adding an applique to the lower
portion of the glazing.
Whether during planning
or post occupancy, such
comprehensive assessments
illuminate the path toward
aligning building capabilities
and operations with occupant
needs and behaviors. In this
case, the design overlooked
the building’s impacts on social
aspects of occupant well-being.
While the emerging WELL
Building program touches on
this perspective under a feature
entitled Just Organization,
focused on encouraging fair and
equitable organizations, like any
rating system it doesn’t specifically
address how a building’s design
itself facilitates fairness and equity
among occupants. A positive
change to this feature would add a
requirement that professionals be
included with expertise addressing
occupant engagement and social
factors.
Expertise comes from learning
from experience. Without
evaluations, we don’t know what
works, what doesn’t and why.
Comprehensive POEs provide
an opportunity to learn from our
experiences and ensure buildings
are performing well for their
owners, operators and occupants.
POEs also provide an important
means for improving and growing
certification systems, like WELL
Building.
Marcel Harmon, PhD,
PE, LEED AP O+M
Senior associate,
applied anthropologist,
M.E. Group, Overland Park, Kansas
