Al Nasa'a, R; (2007) Post occupancy review of comfort conditions at Heelis, central office building for the National Trust. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The environmental impact of buildings is not fully realized during the design stage, of its life cycle, where it is usually quite difficult to foresee how well it would perform under various conditions. At a time when more energy efficient and passive solutions to the design of the built environment are paramount, it is becoming more essential to bridge the credibility gap between design targets and actual building performance, particularly during its post occupancy stage 1 . This study examines comfort conditions at Heelis, the Central Office Building for the National Trust in Swindon, Wiltshire. The research follows on after a series of reviews and studies that were conducted last year. Building visits, an occupant comfort survey and physical monitoring are used to obtain data on indoor air temperature, radiant temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, and daylight factors. In addition, the questionnaire survey is used to examine occupants' comfort and satisfaction with their indoor environment in different zones of the building and the results are compared to data from the calculated dry resultant temperature. This study shows that for the monitored period during the summer of this year, overall conditions were satisfactory as proven by resultant temperatures between 20 and 24 C. Although no overheating occurred this year, the relationship between air and radiant temperatures is used to predict resultant temperature for 2006, an exceptionally hot summer. This has shown that although air temperatures do not exceed design benchmarks, resultant data shows some overheating on the first floor of the building where resultant exceeds 28 C for 3.4% of working hours. Daylight factors are also found to be up to 50% less than predicted values in some parts of the building. The monitoring and analysis has shown that although the building is performing rather well, some areas are in need of some improvement, emphasizing the importance of post occupancy evaluation in general in improving building performance and bridging the gap between design targets and performance data.

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