Co-designing with office workers to reduce energy consumption and improve comfort

According to the EC Action Plan for Energy Efficiency, a reduction of up to 30% in energy use within the office and commercial building sector can be achieved through occupant behavior change. Multiple studies support similar estimations for countries outside of the EU (e.g. Lopes et al. 2011). Depending on the building type, office occupants can perform various low energy actions to increase office comfort (e.g. Barlow & Fiala, 2007). However, sustained behavior change ensuring energy-efficiency may be difficult when not embedded and enforced in everyday office practices.This paper describes an approach based on co-creation methods as a means to engage office occupants to make them conscious of the impact that their actions have on comfort and energy use by reflecting on results from measurements and observations. Methods to create awareness include co-designing of a monitoring platform, self-reporting mechanisms and feedback systems, enabled by modular hardware and an adaptable software platform. Through the co-design process supported by engineers and designers, occupants define ways of how sensor monitoring, self-reporting and feedback displays can be introduced into their office environments to stimulate and guide their energy-efficient and comfort-efficient actions in the context of everyday office practices.The co-design approach is currently being deployed and evaluated in an ongoing study, which is being conducted in three large office buildings, each involving an experimental and a control group. Co-design workshops have demonstrated the value of involving office workers in exploring how best to involve stakeholders across various functions in the organizations. Office occupants were found to be particularly motivated towards improving comfort, which can act as a pathway to shaping energy behavior

Co-designing with office workers to reduce energy consumption and improve comfort

According to the EC Action Plan for Energy Efficiency, a reduction of up to 30% in energy use within the office and commercial building sector can be achieved through occupant behavior change. Multiple studies support similar estimations for countries outside of the EU (e.g. Lopes et al. 2011). Depending on the building type, office occupants can perform various low energy actions to increase office comfort (e.g. Barlow & Fiala, 2007). However, sustained behavior change ensuring energy-efficiency may be difficult when not embedded and enforced in everyday office practices.This paper describes an approach based on co-creation methods as a means to engage office occupants to make them conscious of the impact that their actions have on comfort and energy use by reflecting on results from measurements and observations. Methods to create awareness include co-designing of a monitoring platform, self-reporting mechanisms and feedback systems, enabled by modular hardware and an adaptable software platform. Through the co-design process supported by engineers and designers, occupants define ways of how sensor monitoring, self-reporting and feedback displays can be introduced into their office environments to stimulate and guide their energy-efficient and comfort-efficient actions in the context of everyday office practices.The co-design approach is currently being deployed and evaluated in an ongoing study, which is being conducted in three large office buildings, each involving an experimental and a control group. Co-design workshops have demonstrated the value of involving office workers in exploring how best to involve stakeholders across various functions in the organizations. Office occupants were found to be particularly motivated towards improving comfort, which can act as a pathway to shaping energy behavior

Building occupancy certification: development on an approach to assess building occupancy

Improving energy efficiency in commercial buildings is of great importance, given the\u3cbr/\u3elarge percentage of energy consumed in the sector. However, the incentives to save\u3cbr/\u3eenergy in these environments are unusual. From the perspective of managers, energy\u3cbr/\u3econsumption is only a very small part of the financial burden of companies in\u3cbr/\u3ecomparison to materials, rent or salaries, and thus, economic incentives have a low\u3cbr/\u3eimpact in these environments. On the one hand, unlike in home environments,\u3cbr/\u3eoccupants of office building do not see a direct financial effect on their energy related\u3cbr/\u3eoccupancy practices, as so, their incentive is also not a monetary one. Thus, to\u3cbr/\u3eeffectively reduce energy consumption in office buildings, a different approach should\u3cbr/\u3ebe followed. The Building Occupancy Certification System (BOCS) project aims at\u3cbr/\u3edeveloping a building evaluation system focused on the building’s occupancy instead\u3cbr/\u3eof its technical or physical characteristics. The objective of BOCS is the reduction of\u3cbr/\u3eenergy consumption in office buildings while improving indoor conditions. In this\u3cbr/\u3eregard, the improvement of indoor conditions and thus, productivity, is the incentive for\u3cbr/\u3ecompany managers and staff to implement the BOCS system. Though, keeping\u3cbr/\u3eenvironmental awareness visible in the agenda. This paper presents the preliminary\u3cbr/\u3eresults from the first BOCS pilot study in the Netherlands, regarding the building\u3cbr/\u3eperformance in terms of thermal comfort and indoor environmental quality. This study\u3cbr/\u3efocuses on the data collection and analysis.\u3cbr/\u3eKeywords:\u3cbr/\u3eBuilding occupancy; office buildings; monitoring; thermal comfor

Monitoring occupancy practices and comfort in commercial buildings

Improving energy efficiency in commercial buildings is of great importance, given the large percentage of energy consumed in the sector. Energy consumption in commercial buildings account for 30-40% of the primary energy consumption in developed countries. The implementation of low carbon technologies in buildings can potentially decrease energy consumption, however many small and medium companies lease buildings and therefore investments in building technology are not a viable option. In addition, energy consumption is only a very small part of the financial burden of companies, and thus, economic incentives have a low impact in these environments. Furthermore, occupancy behaviour is greatly affected by the type of building and installations. Very environmentally friendly occupancy patterns in an energy inefficient building will not show up in the energy bill, and so, the efforts of the occupants would not be visible or rewarded. On the other hand, very wasteful occupancy patterns in a very energy efficient building might hinder the buildings' performance, but might not be discovered looking only at energy figures. The Building Occupancy Certification System (BOCS) aims at developing an evaluation system focused on the building's occupancy instead of its technical characteristics. The objective of BOCS is the reduction of energy consumption in offices while improving indoor conditions. In this regard, the improvement of indoor conditions and thus, productivity is the incentive for company managers and staff to implement the BOCS system. This paper reports on the system infrastructure and evaluation of the BOCS methodology

Office occupants as active actors in assessing and informing comfort:a context-embedded comfort assessment in indoor environmental quality investigations

The energy and building research community acknowledges the importance of including occupants' wellbeing in the evaluation of building energy performance. Particularly in office buildings, occupants' comfort assessment is not yet a common practice, partially due to the shortcomings of the comfort assessment activities. Contextual factors such as the organizational culture, occupants' personality traits and emotional states, and the building and research measurement infrastructures do interact with occupants' motivation to report and influence their actual reporting behaviour. By means of an in situ mixed method approach combining real-world research and user-centric methods, this study investigates the impact of a reporting-based comfort assessment. Two buildings, representing different organizational cultures, were selected to study the influence of reporting behaviour on comfort assessment. The buildings were equipped with innovative indoor climate monitoring and in situ comfort reporting infrastructure and 2-week field studies were conducted in both buildings. By discussing results from these studies, this paper contributes to the development of building research methodologies of indoor climate and comfort assessment by providing practical experience in embedding comfort reporting behaviour in the analysis of comfort assessment. A contextual typology of reporting behaviour is introduced and its implications regarding the reliability and validity of comfort reporting techniques are discussed

Sustainable practices in office buildings: Applying social practice theory and reflective design interventions

Energy efficiency in office buildings has focused primarily on technological developments for the optimization of energy building performance. In this effort occupants’ behaviour has often been simplified or ignored. This in turn has resulted in solutions that either have a short-term impact on energy savings or in the long-term the measured impact differs largely from the theoretical estimations. A user-centric view is therefore needed to capture the complexity of occupants’ behaviour in the design of energy saving technologies. Social practices theory describes this complexity as the everyday practices that are characterized by interactions between people’s diverse sets of values and competences and the materials of the environment in which they engage in. Whereas people are constantly adapting their environment to meet their needs, they often perceive an ‘inability to act’ when explicitly asked to change. This opens an opportunity for the design research community to reconsider design interventions not as ends for behavioural change but as means to support practitioners in their discovery and appropriation of materials, competences and values to achieve optimal changes. From a design research perspective supporting these processes requires methods that a) empower occupants to create, test and assess interventions and b) fit in their everyday activities. This paper presents an in-situ and practice-based design process implemented in Living Lab settings with methods that aim to support a multidisciplinary team in the development of reflective design interventions to empower active involvement of building occupants in appropriating changes. The paper presents preliminary findings of an ongoing project and envisages future work to better understand hierarchy of practices and its potential impact on how occupants engage in changing activities