An Evaluation of Post-Occupancy of Sustainable Housing

This paper is based on an MSc dissertation by Buckley (2011) who explored the current state of post-occupancy evaluation in relation to the residential construction sector. The aim was to develop a conceptual framework for the development of post-occupancy evaluation as a sustainability benchmarking tool. In-depth exploratory interviews were carried out with five project managers with affordable housing development expertise. Three major themes emerged from the template analysis used to code and categorise the data: design and construction, post-completion practices, and post-occupancy evaluation. The interviews indicated that the process of knowledge transfer to new occupants is a critical factor which deserves future post-occupancy evaluation. Other key issues were consumption monitoring, handling the discrepancies between the performance of buildings as-designed and as-used and the extent to which knowledge should be shared more widely in the sector.