Ying Hua

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.

Effects of nursing unit spatial layout on nursing team communication patterns, quality of care, and patient safety.

Studies investigating factors contributing to improved quality of care have found that effective team member communication is among the most critical and influential aspects in the delivery of quality care. Relatively little research has examined the role of the physical design of nursing units on communication patterns among care providers. Although the concept of decentralized unit design is intended to increase patient safety, reduce nurse fatigue, and control the noisy, chaotic, and crowded space associated with centralized nursing stations, until recently little attention has been paid to how such nursing unit designs affected communication patterns or other medical and organizational outcomes. Using a pre/post research design comparing more centralized or decentralized unit designs with a new multi-hub design, the aim of this study was to describe the relationship between the clinical spatial environment and its effect on communication patterns, nurse satisfaction, distance walked, organizational outcomes, patient safety, and patient satisfaction. Hospital institutional data indicated that patient satisfaction increased substantially. Few significant changes were found in communication patterns; no significant changes were found in nurse job satisfaction, patient falls, pressure ulcers, or organizational outcomes such as average length of stay or patient census.

Understanding POE for future building practices

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) is commonly understood as a process of systematic evaluation of the performance of buildings, conducted after they have been built and occupied for some time. The emphasis of POE is not on collecting technical performance specifications; rather, user perspective is a key component of the process. Researchers and professionals have developed various methods and techniques to understand user requirements regarding safety, health, comfort, functionality and efficiency, and aesthetic quality of buildings, and to identify system defects. Although by definition, POE has a wide scope, there is an obvious focus on building ambient environment quality in the existing literature on POE. Generally speaking, there is increasing attention on the ability of buildings to support occupant needs, with even higher expectations for green buildings. The recognition of significant environmental impact of buildings resulted in the creation and adoption of new technologies, innovative design and operation strategies, and new materials in building projects. The outcomes of these new applications have to be examined after occupation. In the meanwhile, buildings are changing their static nature. In general, building systems are getting more complex. Rapid changes in technology and increasing levels of automation in systems controls make it challenging for building users to understand and participate. Although voluntary green building certification systems, such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), now encourage POEs by allocating corresponding credits, and a number of new buildings, including some ‘green buildings’, were charged with performing poorly in meeting user needs; it is not a common practice for professionals and companies who design buildings to go on to monitor and assess their performance after occupation. For projects that do track outcomes, more attention tends to be on energy performance. The relationship among design knowledge, performance outcomes, and user expectations appears to be a lot more complex than what was understood or assumed in building practices, therefore calling for new research. It is widely accepted that building occupants have to be engaged as active inhabitants and an integral part of shaping comfort and optimizing energy use in buildings. POE studies that recognize this new role of occupants and explore the elastic concepts of comfort and satisfaction have the potential to lead to insights that inform new methods, procedures, and standards for building design and operation. Based on these studies, a better understanding can be developed about the interaction between occupants and building systems, including occupant behaviour, perceived and actual user control, optimal level of integration between individual and central controls, utilization of real-time feedback from user for building operations, and means to address diverse and dynamic occupant needs. With the growing opportunities enabled by advancements in technology, especially information and network technologies, it is easier, faster, and more economical to gather more reliable statistics and benchmarks for building evaluation; this has the potential to put the occupants closer to the centre of the discussion by connecting occupants with the strongest link in the quality chain, in order to mend the gap between the ‘supply side’ and the ‘demand side’ to avoid repetition of same mistakes. It also potentially changes POE from a one-off practice to continuous information collection for supporting operation decisions by taking advantage of an improved feedback loop with user information. Predictive static calculations and dynamic simulation tools for estimating energy performance of building can also benefit from integrating user information to address the

Building a knowledge base for evidence-based healthcare facility design through a post-occupancy evaluation toolkit

Background: Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) can play a critical role in evidence-based healthcare design (EBD) by evaluating design effectiveness and adding to the knowledge base. However, its potential has not been fully realized due to the lack of standardized tools, inaccessibility of findings, a focus on technical performance instead of patient-centred outcomes, and irrelevance to healthcare processes. Objective: To strengthen the EBD knowledge base by developing standardized POE tools. Methodology: A conceptual framework was created from a review of over 100 research publications. A standardized POE toolkit was developed, including questionnaires on design strategies, healthcare outcomes, and staff perception. Pilot testing was conducted at five healthcare construction projects. This toolkit is being further augmented by additional on-site audit POE tools. Findings: From the pilot testing of the first POE tool, significant variations were found among the five pilot facilities in terms of the design strategies adopted. Satisfaction with the indoor environment was higher among occupants at facilities with more sustainable design strategies implemented. Patients reported high satisfaction (65–83% top ratings) and high willingness to recommend facilities (71–85% ‘definitely recommend’). The general satisfaction of staff with building ranged from 0.88 to 2.2 on a scale from −3 to 3. Conclusion: A robust framework and a set of standard tools for obtaining broad building-level data related to healthcare design have been established to comprehensively evaluate building performance and to enable quick dissemination and easy access to new knowledge created.

Framework of construction innovation: A review of diffusion of sustainable innovation in the building sector

The use of different theoretical frameworks and models of construction innovations is based on the particular characteristics of the construction work, including the types and modes of innovations, the “players” involved in the projects, and other influences. Recently, some new models have adopted new perspectives and approaches, such as socio-psychological perspectives, sociology of technology approaches, and actor-network theory. Some models were empirically tested with specific technological and non-technological innovations in architectural and engineering design firms. The goal of this study is to explore how sustainable innovations in the building sector can be understood through diffusion of innovation theories. To do so, previously proposed frameworks and models are critically reviewed; then, empirical studies are synthesized to find (in)consistencies in the literature. As a result, this study clarifies the commonalities and dissimilarities of the suggested models of construction innovation and discusses how different models supplement each other and can be combined. Attention to the process of adopting sustainable construction innovations reveals common challenges of sustainability, as well as leverage points where stakeholders can intervene in the building sector for sustainability. In the end, through the proposed theoretical framework, future research that can facilitate the adoption of sustainable innovation is suggested.