Engineers and assessors have spoken and they say thermal comfort is king when it comes to keeping occupants happy in the office. Architects, on the other hand, have different priorities and believe that visual comfort reigns supreme. But when it comes to energy consumption, all experts agree that thermal comfort is the top priority. And the good news is, sprucing up the visual and acoustic aspects of your office might just be the cost-effective way to boost satisfaction without breaking the bank! The study by Roumi et al. also provides a handy guide for making sustainable retrofit decisions for your office building. Let’s break it down:

Research Rationale:

• The study aims to identify different building experts’ perspectives on the impact of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) factors and underlying parameters for optimising occupant satisfaction and energy consumption in office buildings.

Methodology:

• The study surveyed the views of building experts in Australia by sending emails containing a link to an online survey. The paper surveys the views of 30 carefully selected building experts (ten architects, ten building engineers, and ten building assessors)
• A total of 52 experts answered the survey, resulting in a high response rate of 69.3%. However, some respondents did not answer the survey completely.
• The priority of IEQ factors and parameters over occupant satisfaction and energy consumption was converted into weighting systems to demonstrate their priority in computing the IEQ measurement model for Australian office buildings.
• As part of a decision analysis process, Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method was used to calculate the preference of the experts based on attributes defined as multiple criteria.

Findings:

• Results show that the building engineers and assessors regard thermal comfort as the most critical criterion influencing occupant satisfaction, 54% and 58%, respectively.
• Architects regard visual comfort as the most critical criterion (39%).
• All expert groups have a similar opinion on the relative importance of IEQ factors in office energy consumption—thermal comfort is deemed the most important criterion, followed by IAQ
• An IEQ Effectiveness index is developed to represent the cost-effectiveness of improving a specific IEQ parameter during the sustainable retrofit process from building experts’ perspectives.
• Visual and acoustic IEQ factors seem to be more cost-efficient aspects to invest in achieving higher occupant satisfaction while not significantly demanding more energy input.
• The study provides guidance and reference for the decision-making process of the office building sustainable retrofit.

Paper Title: Weighting of Indoor Environment Quality Parameters for Occupant Satisfaction and Energy Efficiency

Authors:

Soheil Roumi^a,b, Fan Zhang^a,b, Rodney A. Stewart^a,b, Mattheos Santamouris^c,d

^a School of Engineering and Built Environment, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia 

^b Cities Research Institute, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia 

^c Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

^d Anita Lawrence Chair in High Performance Architecture, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

The full paper was shared and the article was approved by the lead author.

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