Post-Occupancy Evaluation for the Built Environment

Introduction

Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) refers to studies that assess the operation, status, and usability of a physical setting at some point after construction is completed and users move in. These studies are typically undertaken to assess the success of the design in meeting stated goals, identify problems needing attention, or provide ‘lessons learned’ for the design of another facility. POEs can be qualitative or quantitative in approach, involving a variety of data gathering techniques, including surveys, behavioural observations, behavioural trace or archival data. They range from brief and inexpensive individual studies to large scale, longitudinal, multi-site efforts. POEs are conducted by facility owners, particularly those seeking to improve repeatedly built settings, designers trying to inform their practice, and researchers looking to understand human-environment relations.

Definition of Post-Occupancy Evaluation

A Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is an assessment of a designed environment after it has been constructed and occupied to see how well it operates in terms of criteria that address function, efficiency and comfort of its intended uses and users. POE makes use of the research methods, instruments and data analysis techniques of the social sciences to provide a systematic evaluation of the setting. Zimring (2002) defines POE as:

… the systematic assessment of the process of delivering buildings or other designed settings or of the performance of those settings as they are actually used, or both, as compared to a set of implicit or explicit standards, with the intention of improving the process or settings. (Zimring, 2002)

POE has been compared to programme evaluation in providing an opportunity to ‘pause and reflect on the impact … to assess concept, implications and utility, and to judge and improve planning, effectiveness and efficiency …’ (Rossi & Freeman, 1985). Shibley (1982) notes that design without evaluation is like ‘action without reflection’. As such, POEs can serve not only to modify a specific building or setting type, but to improve design practice.

POE can include technical assessments of engineering systems (lighting, HVAC, etc.). It is distinctive, however, in its ‘focus on building occupants and their needs … [providing] insights into design consequences of past design decisions and the resulting building performance’ (Preiser, Rabinowitz & White, 1988). Anderson and Butterfield (1980) make a distinction between POE as the study of functional use (social and behavioural issues) versus Post-Construction Evaluation studies of engineering systems.

POE is the last stage of Zeisel's (1981) oftcited design cycle, which describes the evolution of a design project from concept, through programming, design, and construction, concluding with the POE. In Zeisel's model, the prime value of a POE is to provide information that informs the next iteration of the design cycle, and adds to the general base of information about that building type and environment-behaviour relations.

Brief History of Post-Occupancy Evaluation

Bechtel (1997) notes that POEs have been conducted for decades, not as formal studies but in reviews and assessments of buildings done by architecture professors and their students. POE as a self-conscious and rigorous activity, however, began in the 1960s as social scientists worked to create methodologies that could [Page 733]provide support for designers who were trying to provide socially responsive facilities (see Zimring, 2002; Friedmann, Zimring & Zube, 1978; Preiser, Rabinowitz & White, 1988; Shibley, 1982). The settings studied in many early POEs were those readily available to the university-based researchers (e.g. university dormitories), or sites of special interest to behavioural and social scientists (e.g. psychiatric settings, etc.).

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