Towards Wellbeing: Hospital Evaluation Using the Problem-Seeking Method

Abstract

A post-occupancy evaluation (POE) feeds data back into the design process as a measurement of the gap between planned and actual performance of a building. The most common application is to evaluate the performance of a facility once it is occupied. The army calls this post evaluation “ground truth,” an assessment of what happened in the field differently from how the strategy was planned. A POE aims at improving the quality and performance of the design process and its final product (see Fig. 18.1). One definition of excellence is the quality of experiences the project brings to all the categories of stakeholders: clients, design team, builders, users, the public, and the profession. A POE is thus part of the building performance evaluation (BPE) process and provides the benefits of a holistic view on the building life cycle of a project, including life cycle phases from strategic planning and programming, through design, and to post occupancy—with the related review loops, offering feedback loop as adjustments to existing building forms and feeding forward into design standards and guidelines (Dodson 2011).