The impact of the economy on pre- and post-occupancy evaluations

The Rating Game

Recent reports on the use of pre or post-occupancy evaluations appear positive but Kevin Stanley asks what are the benefits of the exercise and will cost-conscious times see the practice decline?

Pre or post-occupancy evaluations (PPOE) are surveys, most commonly completed by questionnaire or face-to-face interviews, carried out on employees by facilities managers or consultant before an office move, refurbishment or major change. They can also be used after the event, to provide feedback on how successful the workplace is in supporting the occupying organisation and individual end-user requirements. A well-devised and carefully undertaken PPOE will help to fine-tune a building as well as highlight any issues.

Reports vary but PPOE has definitely been around since at least the 1960s, and although its popularity has fluctuated, it remains a well-known device. “There are many advocates of PPOE. It is often an essential part of the toolkit when a project is being defined or pitched for. I believe that they are recognised as good practice but that the follow through is sometimes flawed,” says Claire Watson, head of business development and enterprise at the BIFM. The reason for this lack of follow up can be considered in a number of ways, suggests Watson.

The first and foremost reason being that the original project team has moved on and no-one sees the benefit of closing the project planning by completing the PPOE. The second is that the project has gone badly wrong in both cost and time and there is a reluctance to pin blame therefore dropping the PPOE is an easy option. The third factor is that where the end user was not in the design loop and using a well constructed PPOE will open up criticism of the design or project execution. As the user was not expecting to be surveyed, they raise no objection when a PPOE is not implemented. Finally, it could just be attributed to apathy. “I believe however that PPOE is essential, as continuous improvement must be the goal of every organisation,” says Watson.

Andrew Mawson, of Advanced Workplace Associates is a supporter of PPOE. He believes that PPOE is an essential tool and that companies should be keen to use it. “All our projects have a PPOE related to the space, the technology and the ways of working, as well as the process of change. It’s a vital way of learning whether what you have done has worked and how to modify solutions and processes for the future.” Mawson believes that a holistic approach is sensible and that looking at factors such as space, technology and behaviours, and then tuning these factors, makes the ‘whole’ work better. “PPOE helps to identify whether what you have done has worked and how to modify solutions or processes for the future. PPOE is very useful because it helps you to ‘tune’ the workplace and learn what you should do next time to improve the result, or the process, you use,” he says.

Recent reports on the usage of PPOE are positive, suggesting that usage is up thanks, at least in part, to a number of government and NGO initiatives having increased its profile. “The uptake of PPOE has increased over the last few years because of OGC’s High Performing Property (HPP) benchmarking intuitive and the British Council for Offices (BCO) Guide to PPOE recognising the effects of efficiency relating to cost, space and satisfaction,” says Nigel Oseland, director of strategy, at DEGW. “It is now mandatory for government departments to evaluate their buildings and return the results via ePIMS, as part of the OGCs benchmarking initiative,” says Oseland. Nevertheless it seems that there remains an element of dislike, or mistrust, of PPOE. Oseland explains why this should not necessarily be a stumbling block. “Part of the dislike of PPOEs is the whole litigation element. However, as mentioned PPOE is to do with how the building supports the occupying business and takes place usually six months after moving in, so it is not to do with the defects liability or commissioning stages.”

So what are the main benefits of PPOE? “The value of these studies is in helping us understand the performance of any building in use, new-build or existing, modern or historic, whether only occupied for a month, or occupied by the same tenant for several years,” says Daniel Winder a spokesperson for the BCO. Indeed many people assume that PPOE studies are only worth doing after a new-build building has been occupied for a short period of time, and that the results might enable the building systems to be tweaked to achieve better performance. However this is only a small part of the process. “A thorough, holistic, PPOE can identify not only what the performance of a building is, but also why it is what it is, as well as helping us to understand the effects of the building performance on the productivity and satisfaction of the occupants and the performance of their business,” explains Winder.

Yet there are further barriers to PPOE, including, perhaps primarily in a time of recession, cost. PPOE, when considered as part of the larger picture, is not expensive, however despite this it is debatable whether there is a certain and quantifiable financial gain to carrying out a PPOE. Moreover the finance for a PPOE is a capital expenditure item whereas the likely gains will be in revenue expenditure and staff performance improvement. These latter gains are usually difficult to attribute to any changes made as a response to the results of the study. Responsibility can also be a problem. There will always be the question of who owns the study. Opinions will differ from company to company but Facilities Management, Human Resources, The Board of Directors and The Project Design Team are all likely to be in the frame. Finally there is the legal and professional responsibility for the results. In a new building who will take responsibility for the performance of the property, especially if the results are below expectations?

Which is best?

Another talking point is the perceived lack of industry-standard questions, or an understanding of which PPOE might be the best. Swanke, DEGW, Gensler and CoreNet have all developed PPOE, all of which use different methodologies and metrics in application and address different aspects of performance. Would greater standardisation of PPOE be a positive step? “Given the long-term needs and objectives of the industry, some level of standardisation would clearly be helpful. Although the Better Buildings Partnership Sustainability Benchmarking Toolkit sets out a useful format in relation to energy use, metrics for numerous other criteria also need to be established, and I suspect that any overall industry agreement on the metrics of data collection are yet some way off. One of the key advantages of the Useable Buildings Trust approach is that the data is publicly accessible which allows others to learn from it,” says Winder.

However Oseland points to the fact that many PPOE consultants have databases of their own, into which they have invested much time and effort, and suggests that it would now be difficult for them to change their questions or work with an industry standardised PPOE. “Bringing together a set of questions to benchmark buildings against one another, is something that I’ve aspired to do for at least 15 years,” he says. There are, he suggests, a standard set of topics and themes but that the key would be to standardise, not the questions, but the outcome and the case studies arising from PPOE so that lessons learned can be shared. “It’s the feedback and the lessons learned that are the most important things to gain from PPOE. The methodology itself is not as important. Having a set of standard questions is not really feasible because over time PPOE evolves. Topics such as flexible working and sustainability, for example, are fairly new,” says Oseland.

Furthermore Oseland believes that one of the other main problems with PPOE is that people don’t share their results. “PPOE is not just about you and your company, or your own building. Results should be published,” he says.

One person looking to standardise PPOE is workplace strategist Tim Oldman of TO Consulting, who, in May 2010, will be launching the Leesman Index. Which he says will be cost effective and easy to deploy, compared to designing a new PPOE from scratch, and will offer considerably greater comparisons. “We are aiming to set the cost of commissioning a survey at a fraction of percent of the total capital expenditure budget so that it can almost be seen an automatic part of a project initiation due diligence process,” says Oldman.

“We believe we can develop a series of Core questions that will be applicable to every project scenario and give all associated with the design and management of workplace environments, an immediate mirror on their staff engagement in the work setting. We will then have a series of bolt-on modules that can be deployed to explore project specific issues in greater depth. If we can then successfully position ourselves as an independent third party willing to unite data from all sectors and architects, while still delivering significant feedback into their design process, we can start to provide a central library of data that those who use the system can mine for trends, facts and figures,” says Oldman.

PPOE is clearly a useful, perhaps vital, part of ensuring that a building can effectively support the organisation that inhabits it. And although it seems that discussing PPOE raises more questions than it does answers, it’s clear that the big players including Winder, Oseland and Oldman, are invested in the success of PPOE and are very positive in promoting it and improving it.

Kevin Stanley is a freelance journalist