Purpose: Any building refurbishment is challenging and school buildings offer no exception. They are increasingly in need of refurbishment due to their age and evolving teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of literature on sustainable refurbishment so as to identify key lessons from selected successful refurbishment projects. The review findings are expected to contribute to the development of refurbishment plans in an effective and innovative manner that should extend building’s service life, focus on resource efficiency, and comfort their users. It will also contribute to knowledge base of refurbishment and suggest future directions for research. Design/methodology/approach: The paper has undertaken a literature review on the sustainability assessment of buildings and frameworks for sustainable refurbishment. Besides, the work also provides a review of recent successful refurbishment projects to collect and structure systems experiences which can be adopted in developing a sustainable refurbishment strategy for school buildings. Findings: Findings include three groups of lessons in terms of reasons, process and barriers in the selected refurbishment projects that assist stakeholders to prepare a suitable refurbishment plan for their school buildings. The potential of 3D scanners and BIM applications in the refurbishment process will also be reviewed in order to develop a proposed framework of 3D scanner vs BIM for the refurbishment process. Recommendations highlight the role of a national strategy as a driving factor for applying the advantages of information technology to enhance optimal solution selection processes to get better and more sustainable results. Originality/value: The conceptual framework for 3D scanner and BIM applications within sustainable refurbishment for school buildings is currently under researched, and the findings aimed to address such a gap when considering 3D scanners and BIM applications in the refurbishment process.

Achieving the net zero emissions target that was set in the Paris Agreement to mitigate the risks of climate change seems increasingly difficult as countries and sectors of the economy are falling behind the expected trajectory. The building and construction industry, as one of the main contributors to global emissions, has an essential role to play toward this aim. Net zero emissions target has been introduced to this sector as well; however, achieving it is a very challenging and complex task. Many studies have been undertaken on implementing different measures and strategies to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint. These studies identified many challenges and barriers in transforming the industry. This paper aims to provide a systematic review of challenges that organisations face in delivering new net zero emissions buildings. The relevant journal articles published since the Paris Agreement were identified and analysed using mixed-method data analysis, including quantitative (science mapping) and qualitative (thematic) analysis. The result showed increased attention to the subject over this period, with China, the UK, and Australia being the top contexts for research. The most discussed groups of barriers were “economic”, “knowledge”, and “technical”, respectively, followed by “organisational”, “market”, “technological”, and “legal” barriers.

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.

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate the reliability of self-evaluation as a method for measuring the effect(s) of IEQ on the productivity of office workers. The aim of this review is to identify the various constraints to its adequacy in measuring productivity. Thirty (30) studies were selected from peer-reviewed sources and reviewed on their method of measuring productivity. These studies employed the use of self-evaluation (questionnaires or interview) as the sole method of measuring the effect of IEQ on productivity/performance. This review provides insight on the insufficiencies and biases prevalent in self-evaluation. Various issues that compromised the reliability of self-evaluation results in an office environment were discussed. We concluded that self-evaluation is not reliable and does not accurately measure occupant productivity. This study has been a review of past studies and their findings. Further studies that will provide empirical evidence is required to solely test the reliability of self -evaluation in measuring productivity and the effect of factors such as IEQ on it. The paper calls for further debate on occupant’s productivity measurement and how the various factors that affect it can be quantified into measurable entities. This paper fulfils an identified need to revisit the technique of self-evaluation as a method for measuring occupant’s productivity.

In this paper we challenge the notion that “green” buildings can achieve greater productivity than buildings that are not accredited as “green”. For nearly two decades, research has produced apparent evidence which indicates that the design of a “green” building can enhance the productivity of its occupants. This relationship between building design and productivity is claimed to be achieved through compliance with internal environmental quality (IEQ) criteria of Green rating tools. This paper reviews methods of measuring productivity and the appropriateness of the metrics used for measuring IEQ in office environments. This review is supported by the results of a survey of office building users which identifies social factors to be significantly more important than environmental factors in trying to correlate productivity and IEQ. It also presents the findings of observations that were discretely carried out on user-response in green buildings. These findings demonstrate that, despite a building’s compliance with IEQ criteria, occupants still resort to exceptional measures to alter their working environment in a bid to achieve comfort. The work has been carried out on “green” buildings in New Zealand. These buildings are rated based on the NZ “Green Star” system which has adopted the Australian “green star” system with its roots in BREEAM. Despite this, the results of this research are applicable to many other “green” rating systems. The paper concludes that methods of measuring productivity are flawed, that IEQ criteria for building design is unrepresentative of how occupants perceive the environment and that this can lead to an architecture that has few of the inherent characteristics of good environmental design.