Sinem Korkmaz

Effects of Green Buildings on Employee Health and Productivity

We investigated the effects of improved indoor environmental quality (IEQ) on perceived health and productivity in occupants who moved from conventional to green (according to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design ratings) office buildings. In 2 retrospective-prospective case studies we found that improved IEQ contributed to reductions in perceived absenteeism and work hours affected by asthma, respiratory allergies, depression, and stress and to self-reported improvements in productivity. These preliminary findings indicate that green buildings may positively affect public health.

Piloting Evaluation Metrics for Sustainable High-Performance Building Project Delivery

Sustainable high-performance buildings are being more widely adopted around the world to reduce energy costs and improve the well being of occupants. To achieve the set goals for these building projects within realistic financial and time constraints, superior planning, design, and construction processes are needed. The available literature lacks the descriptive project delivery metrics identifying scientific methods for providing insight or feedback about the performance of project delivery processes for sustainable high-performance buildings. This paper describes an exploratory study examining more than 100 variables in green project delivery to scientifically identify important metrics. Limited by a rather small sample due to the relatively young market of green buildings, the outcome of this paper, nevertheless, provides important direction for the continued development of meaningful metrics to assist in the establishment of a decision making support tool for project teams to facilitate optimum project delivery processes for sustainable high-performance buildings.

Project Delivery Metrics for Sustainable, High-Performance Buildings

Due to the mounting complexity of sustainable, high-performance building projects, there is a consequent increase in the requirements for optimized solutions and multidisciplinary teams. Research suggests that project delivery attributes have an important influence on project outcomes of such buildings, especially on cost growth and the level of sustainability achieved. However, the extent of the influence of project delivery attributes and critical patterns of project delivery features that affect project outcomes has yet to be determined through rigorous research. Recognizing this need, this study adopts the defined evaluation metrics from recently completed research to descriptively show the extent to which the relationships and influence of project delivery attributes, such as owner commitment, team integration, and contractual relationships, affect project sustainability goals. The study collected data from 12 green office buildings in the United States. To maintain the quality, validity, and reliabi...

A design process evaluation method for sustainable buildings

Abstract This research develops a technique to model and evaluate the design process for sustainable buildings. Three case studies were conducted to validate this method. The resulting design process evaluation method for sustainable buildings (DPEMSB) may assist project teams in designing their own sustainable building design processes. This method helps to identify critical decisions in the design process, to evaluate these decisions for time and sequence, to define information required for decisions from various project stakeholders, and to identify stakeholder competencies for process implementation.

Costs and Benefits of IEQ Improvements in LEED Office Buildings

Costs and benefits resulting from improved indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings are often hypothesized; however, the precise quantification of such costs and benefits remains a challenge. This research examined the incremental hard and soft costs of realizing IEQ improvements in LEED office buildings and related benefits to occupant well-being and productivity using a case study approach. Self-reported well-being and productivity data were collected by surveying employees occupying conventional offices compared to similar data upon their move to LEED offices. These pre- and postmove findings were analyzed using the life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) framework to calculate the potential economic gains of IEQ improvements to the organizations. The results indicate economically viable investments in LEED-IEQ credits and offers directions for future research. These preliminary findings may assist building owners/investors/policymakers in making better-informed building decisions towards IEQ improvements in buildings from the economic perspective of sustainability.

Case-Based and Collaborative-Learning Techniques to Teach Delivery of Sustainable Buildings

AbstractProject delivery of sustainable buildings is more complex than that for traditional buildings. It requires early interdisciplinary collaboration with full commitment of team members to the project’s green goals—ensured by delivery methods, contractual conditions, team procurement, and project management practices. As the need for sustainable built environment grows, the demand for professionals who can manage delivery of sustainable buildings efficiently will also increase in the (architecture, engineering, and construction) industry. Teaching delivery of sustainable building characteristics to students through traditional methods is challenging, however. This paper presents a case study in which a multidisciplinary graduate class of 14 students was exposed to case-based collaborative-learning methods, examining whether these methods could improve student understanding of sustainable building delivery. The results of pre- and post case study assignment surveys and evaluation of role play and open ...

KEY ATTRIBUTES OF A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF GREEN PROJECT DELIVERY

If green buildings are to continue to reduce the environmental impact of buildings and improve the operating performance of facilities, it is now more important than ever that a study of key project delivery practices, like teaming strategies, contracting approaches, and incentives, be established for these projects. When the performance outcomes of these projects, like sustainable rating, final cost, project schedule and operating performance, are statistically correlated to the project delivery practices, tremendous insight is gained for owners on how to establish their team so that their performance objectives are maximized on their green project. Initial exploratory research reported in this paper confirms how scientifically challenging such a study is to pursue with rigor. There are so many potential variables that may impact sustainable performance outcomes that a quality study needs a sample size in the thousands. By necessity a large study must occur over many years and thus the design of the study is crucial due to the time that lapses between implementation and results. This type of study, often referenced as a longitudinal study, is common in more mature disciplines of anthropology and medicine, especially, epidemiology. The contributions of the paper include a set of preliminary project delivery attributes to focus on for green building projects and data collection and analysis methods for large study of green building project delivery.

Assessing Project Delivery for Sustainable, High-Performance Buildings Through Mixed Methods

Project delivery processes that describe contractual agreements among project participants, timing their activities and levels of involvement have long been subjects for construction management research. Dominated by quantitative methods, this research topic requires large sample sizes mainly due to the extensive number of potential variables arising from the project-based nature of construction. The recent and growing trend in the industry towards sustainable and high-performance building construction introduces added complexities in the project delivery process and challenges research due to the limited population of completed environmentally sustainable buildings. This study presents a combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods, also called mixed methods, as a useful way to respond to the research challenges. This research first quantitatively selects important variables of project delivery from a sample of sustainable, high-performance office buildings (N = 40) and then tests those variables with the analyses of selected case studies. The results of this exploratory study are important to expanding research in the delivery of sustainable and high-performance building projects and the methods required to expand the understanding, validity and reliability of this research.

Impact of Team Characteristics in Learning Sustainable Built Environment Practices

The existing architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry has a fragmented nature in which each team member works in isolation away from a whole-systems thinking. It is a challenge to produce sustainable buildings with systems optimization and multidisciplinary collaboration among different disciplines. It is therefore crucial to help AEC students learn how to exchange information and work in teams for effective design and construction of sustainable buildings. This paper presents a research study based on a senior level undergraduate course, taught at Michigan State University that utilizes a teamwork approach to teach sustainable built environment practices. The study tests the proposition that integrated student teams produce more comprehensive outputs for sustainable projects by using mixed methods of data collection and analysis: observations, interviews, and qualitative and social network analysis. The results showed that teams with a high degree of interaction and leadership provided creative sustainable solutions and had better articulation for every aspect of the project.

Exploring the Validity of Qualitative Methods to Analyze Project Delivery of Sustainable, High Performance Buildings

Construction management and project delivery literature is dominated by quantitative methods. However, recent research suggests that its project based and people centric nature requires adoption of additional qualitative methods. Owing to the mounting complexity in sustainable, high performance building projects and consequent increase in the requirements for optimized solutions achieved by interdisciplinary integration of project teams; an on-going research aims to determine the relation between project delivery methods and level of integration in the delivery process and their further effects on sustainable goals. The preliminary findings of this study show that qualitative methods lead to a deeper understanding of sustainable building project delivery. In the conducted structured interviews and surveys for data collection mainly from three project participants (i.e. owner, designer, and contractor) for each case study, disjunctions were seen within inter-participant responses and between the survey and interview of the same participant. The affected metrics in this process, which include owner’s commitment, project delivery method, and integration in the delivery process, are presented in this paper.