ABSTRACT

Over the years, researchers in architecture, facility management, environmental psychology and other fields have assessed buildings in use. Such assessments are conducted with the aim of improving quality of building stock, design and construction processes, and productivity of employees who work in such buildings. Underlying these studies is the assumption on the part of building evaluators and owners that there is such a thing as a good quality building, i.e the one which can be compared to other buildings and be shown somehow to be better or worse (Zeisel et al., 2003). The demand for welldesigned, robust, efficient, durable, adaptable, healthy, beautiful and comfortable buildings by today’s modern society has been enormously great. The fact that technology is rapidly advancing, businesses are becoming more competitive, people are becoming more intelligent, and the environment is degrading at an alarming rate, puts architects, engineers, builders and facility managers alike under constant pressure to produce buildings that is able to perform their best in any given condition. Indeed, today’s buildings have become more multifaceted. Hence, one fact still remains; the building must conform to the user’s needs. With the urge for achieving sustainability

and continuous improvement of building performance; the needs of building occupants have become one of the major concerns. Brooks and Viccars (2006) stated that strategies and implementation of sustainable buildings will undoubtedly affect the internal conditions for those occupying the buildings. In return, the level of satisfaction of the occupants will determine the sustainability of the buildings. The development leads to the adoption of Post Occupancy Evaluation, an approach to determine the performance of buildings and their counterparts based on the perception of the occupants. While addressing the sustainability issues, most of the existing building performance assessment systems (BPAS) have long been criticized for following a single-dimensional approach or being restricted to the environmental dimension of sustainability only, with limited ability to assess the broader social and economic dimensions of sustainability (Cole, 2006; Cooper, 1999; Curwell and Cooper, 1998; Du Plessis, 2005; Guy and Kibert, 1998; Kaatz, et al., 2005; Kohler, 1999; Theaker and Cole, 2001; Todd, et al., 2001). Hence, it was argued that such studies are inadequate in addressing the complex concept of sustainability as well as many of the non-environmental priorities of emerging/developing countries, such as the social issues derived from the occupants.