Assessing occupant comfort in an iconic sustainable education building

Abstract

The building that houses the Mirvac School of Sustainable Development at Bond University is the first educational building to achieve a six Green Star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia. It has won numerous awards since opening in August 2008 including being judged the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) Sustainable Building of 2009. After more than two years in use a post-occupancy evaluation study was carried out to assess the performance of the building from the viewpoint of the users; both resident staff and transient students. Results for factors such as lighting, thermal comfort, noise and air quality were compared to benchmarks established by the Usable Buildings Trust. The evaluation also assessed the occupants' perceptions of the building's impact on their own productivity. Users generally find the building provides a comfortable work environment although a number of areas of performance were noted as posing some concerns. These included intrusive noise in some parts of the building and some issues with glare in daylit teaching spaces. Such concerns were found to be in accord with the results of previous studies and they highlight some recurrent problems in "green" buildings designed to maximise the use of natural ventilation and natural light. These design challenges and how occupant satisfaction is to be measured and benchmarked are also discussed in the context of this comparative building study.

Indoor environment quality of green buildings: Case study of an LEED platinum certified factory in a warm humid tropical climate

“…It collated paper-based occupant questionnaire responses over a 20-year period [11,12]. Analysing 177 occupant satisfaction surveys stored in the BUS database, Leaman and Boardass observed that certain discomforts are common in many 'green intent' buildings [12].…”

“…They believe removing these discomforts will make occupants happier than providing additional features that they like. Using BUS methodology, Best and Purdey studied user satisfaction levels of a green university building in a warm temperate climate in Australia [11]. Their sample included both resident and transient users.…”

Developing a new framework to bring consistency and flexibility in evaluating actual building performance

“…reveals that they tend to comprise of qualitative and/or quantitative methods (Table III), but with a diverse set of tools and methods that do not seem to be widely applicable, thereby forming a fragmented whole. Although a few BPE techniques such as the Building Use Studies (BUS) questionnaire are beginning to be used internationally (Brown et al , 2010; Best and Purdey, 2012; Deng et al , 2017) to evaluate user perception and satisfaction, there seems to be a general lack of a commonly agreed methodology for conducting evaluations, leading to inconsistencies in data collection, data analysis, reporting and communication of findings.…”

An appraisal of Australia's approach to promoting urban sustainability

“…Further evidence that Australian rating tools may simply be used for “greenwashing” – pretending to be environmentally friendly while actually only wishing to be seen as such – can be found in studies that compare the performance perceptions of the owners and managers of a green rated building with those of the employees and occupiers of the building (Best and Purdey, 2012).…”