BRE - building performance and post occupancy evaluation

	Clients, occupiers and other end users of built facilities, the customers of the construction industry, have long complained that the buildings and other structures provided by the industry do not meet their needs or the needs of their businesses. This can have major impacts – inadequate lifts in a hospital can cause delays, an unattractive office building can be difficult to let and so on. This BRE, DTI-sponsored project highlights the role and perspective of the ‘customer’ in procuring and evaluating construction projects and illustrates the links between the built facility and organisational needs via three in depth case studies. The final output of the project is the development of a Toolkit based on a portfolio of Key Performance Indicators that can be used to assess customer satisfaction post occupancy or as a methodology to set requirements during briefing.

		Case studies In order to underpin the Customer Satisfaction KPI development, investigative case studies were carried out within three recently completed construction projects. As the objective was to produce KPIs that would be relevant for all types of construction projects, civil as well as building, the case studies were chosen to represent different industry sectors. The projects chosen were a hospital ward block, the Roehampton Wing at Kingston Hospital, a motorway, the M60 (new section) and an office building near a major UK airport. For each case study (below, as PDF files), representatives of the different stakeholder groupings were consulted about the key factors that impacted upon themselves as end users of the built facility and also about communication and consultation during the design and construction process. The emphasis was on obtaining a picture of the needs of end users from a holistic viewpoint, looking at a built facility as part of an organisational system rather than in isolation. The case studies illustrate the importance of involving the customer, in the widest sense of the term, in the design and evaluation of construction projects. They highlight the range of factors that govern satisfaction and provide examples of the ways in which a built facilitate can impact on business needs and organisational success.

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