Vivian Loftness

Collaborative knowledge work environments

How can the physical design of the workplace enhance collaborations without compromising an individuals productivity? The body of research on the links between physical space and collaboration in knowledge work settings is reviewed. Collaboration is viewed as a system of behaviours that includes both social and solitary work. The social aspects of collaboration are discussed in terms of three dimensions: awareness, brief interaction and collaboration (working together). Current knowledge on the links between space and the social as well as individual aspects of collaborative work is reviewed. The central conflict of collaboration is considered: how to design effectively to provide a balance between the need to interact and the need to work effectively by oneself. The body of literature shows that features and attributes of space can be manipulated to increase awareness, interaction and collaboration. However, doing so frequently has negative impacts on individual work as a result of increases in noise distractions and interruptions to on-going work. The effects are most harmful for individual tasks requiring complex and focused mental work. The negative effects are compounded by a workplace that increasingly suffers from cognitive overload brought on by time stress, increased workload and multitasking.

Relationship Between Workplace Spatial Settings and Occupant-Perceived Support for Collaboration

The increasingly collaborative nature of knowledge-based work requires workplaces to support both dynamic interactions and concentrated work, both of which are critical for collaboration performance. Given the prevalence of open-plan settings, this requirement has created new challenges for workplace design. Therefore, an understanding of the relationship between the spatial characteristics of workplace settings and the support for collaboration that is perceived by office workers is valuable and timely. Based on a study of 308 office workers in 27 office spaces, this article examines the relationship between a series of workplace spatial characteristics and the support that is perceived by the occupants for collaborations. The spatial characteristics that were examined included individual workstation characteristics that were derived from the literature and a new set of floor-plan layout variables that highlighted shared spaces that are critical for a variety of formal and informal collaboration activities at work. The key characteristics of workplace spatial settings that were associated with the support that the occupants perceived for collaboration were the distance from workstation to meeting space, the distance from workstation to shared service area, the distance from workstation to kitchen/coffee area, and the percentage of floor space that was dedicated to shared services and amenities.

The value of post-occupancy evaluation for building occupants and facility managers

User satisfaction studies and measured performance studies reveal that there are significant gaps between the design intent and the performance of buildings and systems over time and occupancy shifts. Whether this gap is due to failures in the design, construction, management or use of buildings is often unclear, user satisfaction studies, augmented by as-built records and measured performance studies to fully understand the performance of buildings and building systems over time. The article introduces the General Services Administrations (GSA) National Environmental Assessment Toolkit (NEAT) field study tools and database and their contributions to advancing the goals of high-performance buildings that meet ongoing occupancy needs and management resources. The NEAT studies undertaken by Carnegie Mellon Universitys Center for Building Performance GSA have been used to illustrate the value of instrumented post-occupancy evaluation to: promote occupants as sensors and controllers; identify technologies and systems that work; prove that place impacts health and productivity; ensure investment where it matters; recognize the importance of behaviour on environmental gains; and to catalyse innovation.

An integrated approach to design and engineering of intelligent buildings-The Intelligent Workplace at Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract In the past few years, there have been significant advances made in the design and engineering of “intelligent” workplaces, buildings that not only accommodate major advances in office technology but provide better physical and environmental settings for the occupants. This paper will briefly present recent approaches to the creation of innovative environments for the advanced workplace. The architectural and engineering advances demonstrated in Japan, Germany, North America, the United Kingdom, and France can be summarized in four major system categories: (1) enclosure innovations including approaches to load balancing, natural ventilation and daylighting; (2) heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system innovations including approaches to local control and improved environmental contact; (3) data/voice/power “connectivity” innovations; and (4) interior system innovations, including approaches to workstation and workgroup design for improved spatial, thermal, acoustic, visual and air quality. In-depth international field studies of over 20 intelligent office buildings have been carried out by a multidisciplinary expert team of the Advanced Building Systems Integration Consortium (ABSIC) based at Carnegie Mellon University. ABSIC is a university-industry-government partnership focused on the definition and development of the advanced workplace. The ABSIC field team evaluated the component and integrated system innovations for their multidimensional performance qualities, through expert analysis, occupancy assessments and field diagnostics. Based on the results of the case studies and building on the most recent technological advances, the ABSIC team developed the concepts for the Intelligent Workplace, a 7000 square foot living laboratory of office environments and innovations. This project is now under construction at Carnegie Mellon University and its features are discussed in the second section of this paper.

Education and environmental performance-based design: a Carnegie Mellon perspective

There are both negative and positive drivers for curricular change in architecture and architectural engineering departments to embrace more fully systems integration for building performance. On the negative side, failures in indoor air quality, spatial flexibility, acoustics and building integrity represent increasing challenges for designers, leading to costly litigation and remediation, and undermining the reputation of professionals. Heightened performance goals, including environmental sustainability goals, as well as emerging materials, components and system innovations require a greater level of expertise and collaboration between architect, engineers, building scientists and other disciplines. Advancing building performance quality and life cycle decision-making will require more integrated design processes. Least-first-cost decision-making and highpressure value engineering lead clients to decisions that compromise the quality of building projects, and the design community often lacks the relevant information to argue for life cycle quality.

Beyond Eco-Feedback: Adding Online Manual and Automated Controls to Promote Workplace Sustainability

Whereas eco-feedback has been widely studied in HCI and environmental psychology, online manual control and automated control have been rarely studied with a focus on their long-term quantitative impact and usability. To address this, an intervention was tested with eighty office workers for twenty-seven weeks. Through the long-term field test, it was found that the addition of online controls in the feedback intervention led to more energy savings than feedback only and worked better for light and phone usage than computer and monitor usage. The addition of automated control led to the greatest savings but was less effective for efficient users than inefficient ones.

The Design and Evaluation of Intelligent Energy Dashboard for Sustainability in the Workplace

Office workers typically don’t know how much energy they consume at work. Since the workers don’t pay the energy bills, they tend to waste energy. To support energy conservation and motivate workers, the Intelligent Dashboard for Occupants (ID-O) was developed using multiple intervention strategies – eco-feedback (self-monitoring, advice, and comparison), remote controls, and automated controls. The baseline data was collected for fourteen weeks from eighty office workers and ID-Os with different features were deployed for seven weeks. The results show that the group with all the features (eco-feedback, remote controls, automated controls) made the biggest energy savings at 35.4%, the group that had eco-feedback and the remote controls showed 20.2% energy savings, the feedback only group achieved 9% energy savings, and the last group (the control group) produced 3.6% energy savings. The automated control feature produced the biggest energy savings, and was most effective in energy management for lights and phones, but not for computers and monitors.

Critical Frameworks for Building Evaluation: Total Building Performance, Systems Integration, and Levels of Measurement and Assessment

Although there has been heated discussion over the past few years about the need for both objective and subjective field evaluation methods, there has been very little discussion about the need to complete those field evaluations in all performance areas simultaneously. One possible explanation of this void might be the difficulty that the design community has in defining total building performance, much less establishing limits of acceptability and testing for them. Notwithstanding, there have been some collective attempts at the definition of total building performance by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, 1972), the International Standards Organization (ISO, 1972), and the Centre Internationale de Batiment (OB, 1982). The authors of this chapter have built on these efforts, to develop a more manageable yet comprehensive list of six performance mandates for the built environment: spatial quality, thermal quality, acoustic quality, visual quality, air quality, and long-term building integrity against degradation (figure 1) (Hartkopf, Lof tness, Mill, 1983).

The effects of organisational workplace dynamics and building infrastructure flexibility on environmental and technical quality in offices

Despite discussions about the universal work station, there is increasing workplace dynamics in US organisations. These dynamics include space configuration changes, space enclosure changes, changes in occupant density and increasing equipment density. At the same time, building infrastructures have not evolved to meet these demands, with little flexibility in the heating, ventilation and air‐conditioning (HVAC), lighting, or electrical/telecommunication systems of new or existing office buildings. This paper examines the effects of organisational workplace dynamics and building infrastructure flexibility on the environmental and technical quality of offices. Resulting from extensive field studies in US buildings, the authors contend that there are numerous statistically significant issues for the design and management of buildings for the dynamic organisation. The study identified numerous factors that affect thermal, air, lighting and technical quality in offices. In relation to infrastructure, for example, occupants who work in office areas provided with greater cooling capacity and more supply air volume, and combined with smaller HVAC zones, appeared to have higher levels of thermal satisfaction. Those who work in areas with higher outlet densities gave higher technical quality ratings; and those provided with relocatable outlets (raised floor and furniture based) gave significantly higher technical satisfaction ratings than those provided with least‐first‐cost ‘tombstones’. In relation to organisational dynamics, increasing occupant densities in existing buildings are related to more thermal and air quality complaints, more complaints about outlet accessibility, as well as more complaints about inadequate light levels on work surfaces. This paper will outline the major findings of a study linking organisational dynamics with building infrastructure, moving towards the definition of innovations in facility design that will more effectively support dynamic organisations.

Investigating Sustainability Stages in the Workplace

Prior research on stage-based, behavior-change models investigated intervention effectiveness for stress management, smoking cessation, weight management, adherence to lipid-lowering drugs and the like. Few sustainability centered studies identify people’s stage-based levels for energy use reduction or sustainability. In this paper, we investigate sustainability stages with measured behavior and eco-awareness scores based on Geller’s behavior change model. Eighty office employees were assigned to one of four experimental energy dashboard conditions: (a) no energy dashboard; (b) feedback only; (c) feedback and manual on/off controls; and (d) feedback, manual on/off controls, and on/off calendaring. We measured with pre-post surveys change in sustainability levels, energy efficiency discussions frequency, and organizational efforts to understand the work environment. We found that the dashboard with feedback, controls, and on/off calendaring were significantly associated with reported greater energy saving behavior compared to no energy dashboards, and dashboards with fewer features (i.e., feedback only; feedback and on/off control).