The authors’ aim was to determine whether users perceived sustainable buildings to be performing differently from conventional buildings. To do so, they surveyed and analysed users’ perceptions of 45 factors related to operational, environmental, personal control and satisfaction aspects of two sets of buildings: a worldwide set of 31, selected on the basis of their sustainability credentials, and a set of 109 conventional selected from a larger database of commercial and institutional buildings. The user perception scores for each factor were summarized and compared for the two sets of buildings. It was found that the sustainable buildings performed very much better than the conventional buildings in terms of operational and satisfaction factors. In terms of environmental factors, modest improvements were found in thermal conditions and lighting, but little difference in noise, whereas personal control was largely unchanged. Some common features of the sustainable buildings are identified.

Purpose—The purpose of this article is to present evidence of occupants’ perception of their work environment in five different office types (Solo, Duo, 2–4, 5–8 and 8Plus offices). The study examined the influence of the number of office occupants on individual perception of indoor environment quality (IEQ) in office environments. Design/methodology/approach—A dataset of 5000 respondents in 67 commercial and institutional office buildings was analysed using IBM SPSS v23. The dataset contained user response on the BUS Methodology questionnaire that is designed to retrieve occupants’ perception of their work environments. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression analysis were conducted to calculate the impact of the office environment on occupants’ perception of comfort and productivity. Findings - This study showed that occupants in Solo and Duo offices perceived higher satisfaction with their environment (except for temperature in summer), better health and productivity; and more control over the office environment than those in 5–8 and 8Plus offices. Occupants in 8Plus offices were most satisfied with the temperature in summer. It was also noted that the IEQ factors that predicted comfort were observed to not predict productivity. Noise was the only IEQ factor that had predictive power for both comfort and productivity in all the office spaces. Originality/value—This article provides intriguing findings on occupants’ perception of various types of office environment that contributes significantly to the debate on open-plan versus cellular office environments.

Current Building Sustainability Rating Tools (BSRTs) are concerned mainly with the technical features of new designs. The author argues for the inclusion of user performance criteria in BSRTs for buildings in operation. The case is based on insights gained from surveys of users of sustainable buildings worldwide, and a review of the pioneering NABERS protocol. The paper advocates the establishment of a set of user performance criteria for existing buildings, as a key ingredient in making progress towards a truly sustainable building stock as buildings that perform poorly from the users‘ point of view are unlikely to ever be sustainable.

For the last 4 years, the authors have been investigating the performance in practice of a range of sustainable commercial and institutional buildings worldwide. These investigations involved the principal author in one or more visits to each of the buildings and the personal distribution and collection of a questionnaire survey seeking users’ perceptions (on a 7-point scale) of a range of factors: operational, environmental, personal control and satisfaction. For this article, the authors focus on users’ perceptions of the quality of lighting in their work areas. The users’ overall perceptions of lighting conditions are presented and analysed, first with an overview of the average scores for each question, followed by a look at the shapes of their distributions over the set of buildings and then the results of some correlations between lighting overall and a number of other key performance factors such as health, productivity and overall comfort. It was found that lighting overall was one of the higher scoring factors of the environmental category, and the average scores for the amount of natural and artificial lighting were close to the ideal. However, direct glare from the lights and from the sun and sky were noted as issues to be addressed.

The authors investigated the occupants’ perceptions of 47 commercial and institutional buildings worldwide. These investigations involved the personal distribution and collection of a questionnaire survey seeking the occupants' perceptions (scored on a 7-point scale) of some 45 factors: Operational; Environmental (including temperature, air quality, lighting, and noise); Personal Control; and Satisfaction (including design, needs, comfort overall, productivity, and health). Occupants were also invited to comment on nine of these factors. While it has been suggested that in the ideal situation the occupants would have no complaints about their indoor environment, the aim here was to discover the real situation—in particular the proportion of occupants who were prepared to make a comment, the general nature of the comments (positive, negative, or balanced), and whether these correlated with the occupants’ perception scores. On average, 34 per cent of respondents took up the invitation to make a comment. As anticipated, the greater the number of positive comments, the better the perception score, and vice-versa. However, it appears that it only required around 20% of the comments to be positive for the perception score to exceed the mid-point of the seven-point scale, whereas 65% or more of negative comments were needed to go under that point. This paper details the nature of the correlation between the occupants’ comments and the corresponding scores for a range of building operational and indoor environmental factors and speculates on their potential for the analysis and prediction of building performance from the perspective of the occupants.

The main objectives of green buildings are to improve their design and operation. Many studies have investigated whether green buildings lead to higher occupant satisfaction, yet with contradictory conclusions. The paper builds on the results of post-occupancy evaluation surveys of 68 buildings using the BUS Methodology. Satisfaction scores expressed by occupants with the qualities of their indoor environment were compared between the green and non-certified buildings. This research investigates whether green buildings have superior performance to non-certified buildings from the occupants’ perspectives. It was found that generally occupants were more satisfied in green buildings than in non-certified buildings. However, the differences were not significant for any of the environmental and operational parameters including thermal comfort, lighting, noise, and air quality. In the case of operational parameters such as design, needs, image of the building, and cleaning, the differences between the two building groups were notable. Air quality, design and work requirement had the strongest influence on perceived comfort in both green and non-certified buildings. Noise had the strongest influence on perceived productivity for both building groups. Although overall green buildings performed better than the non-certified buildings, the differences between the two were negligible particularly for environmental parameters. Most of the green buildings were not performing entirely as their designers may have intended and had weaknesses that needed to be addressed.