A new framework for post occupancy evaluation of office buildings

Over the last three decades there has been growing interest and attention placed on sustainability and the contribution made by the built environment. Environmental auditing applied to buildings has largely been concerned with energy/water usage and waste. This paper argues that post occupancy evaluation can be a useful tool in validating the performance of commercial office buildings in terms of key design objectives of human comfort and productivity, from the perspective of building inhabitants. A new assessment framework, with post occupancy evaluation at its heart, is developed based on a double-loop (learning) cycle for continuous process improvement founded on three principles of engagement, accountability, and legitimacy. This framework enables the influence of both human comfort and productivity to be integrated in assessing the real environmental and organisational performance of commercial office buildings.