Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

1 Background
2 Pre-PROBE projects
3 Outcomes of PROBE
4 Post-PROBE projects
5 Related articles on Designing Buildings
6 External References

[edit] Background

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

[edit] Pre-PROBE projects

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

[edit] Outcomes of PROBE

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or antagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

[edit] Post-PROBE projects

[edit] Soft Landings

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional support. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

[edit] Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP)

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring.
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissioned when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

[edit] Building Performance Evaluation

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

[edit] Soft Landings for Government

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with the GSL process to be managed by a departmental client).

--Little red

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings

[edit] External References

https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

The Soft landings Framework (2014) by UBT and BSRIA. The definitive version on Soft Landings authored by Roderic Bunn, Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman with assistance from Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy. A Soft Landings Task Force comprising leading design and construction professionals also made considerable contributions to the guidance to ensure its relevance and practicality. BSRIA produced a version for commercial exploitation in 2018.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

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