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Introduction
The Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) sector is responsible for creating and managing the built environment (both buildings and infrastructure) to facilitate human activities (i.e. work, leisure and housing) over time. Creating this man-made environment directly impacts upon the people who inhabit or use buildings and infrastructure but also the surrounding environment. For example, buildings: are major consumers of environmentally polluting natural resources (Milutienė et al., 2012); are essential to socio-economic development (Acharya and Sadath, 2019); and can impact upon occupants’ health and well-being (Al horr et al., 2016). Within the whole life cycle of a built asset’s life, conspicuous academic attention is paid to the design and construction phases (Kessem et al., 2014; Roberts et al., 2018). However, it is the operational phase of building occupancy and use that is the chief contributor to pollution, whole life cycle costs and performance metrics (cf. Bosch et al., 2014; Liu and Issa, 2014; Lindkvist, 2015; Nical and Wodynski, 2016). For this reason, far greater attention is needed to review and evaluate building performance in-use.
To measure a building’s operations and performance, a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is typically utilised to determine whether decisions made by the design, construction and facilities management (FM) professionals have met the envisaged requirements of end-users and the development’s commissioners (Adeyeye et al., 2013; Skills Funding Agency, 2014). Such work has significant implications in the area of soft landings (within a building delivery process) by ensuring that future decisions made about similar buildings designs are based upon lessons learnt from an existing building’s operational performance and the fulfilment of client and user requirements (Gana et al., 2018). POE considers a broad range of diverse performance metrics including: building use, energy consumption, maintenance costs and user satisfaction (cf. RIBA, 2016, 2017a, b). A building’s operational performance is measured using: project team feedback that recounts the commissioning and construction phases; end-user feedback on finishes and functional performance; technical performance feedback from a building’s systems; and a strategic overview incorporating the data from each of the aforementioned evaluation stages (cf. HEFCE, 2006; RIBA, 2016, 2017a, b).
The widely espoused beneficial implications of POE implementation include: transference of operations knowledge accrued in order to inform future building designs (Cooper, 2001);...