User Perception Benchmarks for Commercial and Institutional Buildings in New Zealand.

Buildings are ultimately built for people to use, so it is important that they are designed to suit the occupants’ needs. The indoor environment can affect the comfort, health, and productivity of occupants. Yet very little is known about how the building users perceive these matters and there is very little information on what would constitute norms or benchmarks for their perceptions. If we wish to improve users’ perceptions then it is essential to have a reliable standardised set of benchmarks. However, at present there is no statistically unbiased, country-based benchmark for the perceptions of the occupants of the building environments that is representative of the existing building stock. Predominantly, current building performance indicators have the main focus on technical aspects of the building such as energy consumption and materials recycling; very little attention is paid to how the occupants themselves rate the building. User perception benchmarks will allow building owners/users to see how New Zealand buildings are rated by the occupants themselves. Although subjective, it will allow the space to be rated by those who it is designed for, the occupants. This in turn will allow for possible improvements in the construction of comfortable, healthy, and productive work environments. The overall aim of this study is to contribute to the improvement of the performance of commercial and institutional buildings for their occupants through the exploration of user performance benchmarks. The objectives are to provide a general overview of existing studies which have investigated user perceptions, to explore the nature and characteristics of benchmarks, to create a pilot database of results for user surveys of NZ buildings, and finally to use the data collected to explore methods for determining benchmarks for NZ buildings in terms of user perception. Using questionnaires as a tool for assessing the performance of a building is an effective way of determining how the building is affecting the occupants, and is cheaper and less time consuming than the technical measures that would be needed to reach the same level of detail. The pilot database allowed flexibility in the statistical analysis and exploration of how possible benchmarks could be constructed. Patterns and influencing factors were investigated in these results. The results from the occupant questionnaire data from this database followed consistent patterns to those of other established methods, with the Storage, Health and Air variables consistently scoring low. The highest scoring variables are for Furniture, Image, and Lighting Overall. Image is the variable with the largest variability, reflecting its subjective nature. Correlations were carried out on the summary variables, with particular focus on Health, Overall Comfort, and Perceived Productivity. These were highly correlated with each other and many of the other variables. In terms of the indoor environment variables, Air Overall in Summer, Air Overall in Winter, Temperature Overall in Summer and Temperature Overall in Winter were consistently the highest correlation between Health, Overall Comfort and Perceived Productivity. Lighting Overall had the weakest correlation for all three variables. It was deemed that it was entirely appropriate and feasible to establish benchmarks from the questionnaire data received, and through preliminary exploration incorporate them into building rating tools. There are a variety of forms these benchmarks can take, with positives and negatives for each.