Occupant satisfaction signatures: Longitudinal studies

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Session 10 Paper 1, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, 14-15 April 2016

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Occupant surveys are rarely used to record how occupant comfort perceptions alter with changes in buildings over time. This paper reports results from long-term monitoring of two office buildings where longitudinal occupant satisfaction surveys have been compared with known technical and organisational changes. A form of context-mapping has been devised to provide a generic and systematic method of capturing changes and linking those changes to variations in occupant comfort perceptions. The case studies show that changes in occupants’ perceptions of environmental conditions can be linked to higher occupant densities, a shift from cellular to open-plan, and reduction in personal control over the environment. The results demonstrate the value of a context-sensitive approach to understanding occupant comfort.