An exploration of post-occupancy evaluation in Canada: origins, milestones and next steps

ABSTRACT

Several histories by prominent researchers in the field locate Canada among the early adopters and entrepreneurs of post-occupancy evaluation (‘POE’). Despite its reputation for being in use in Canada, POE has lived comfortably on the margins of the Canadian building industry for decades, taking a backseat to more prescriptive and prognostic approaches to building performance and design quality. This paper provides a semi-systematic review and content analysis of POE as it appears today in Canadian research, policy, practice and education. Results are presented in two parts. The first part details the untold history of POE in Canada, its origins and milestone contributions, and current directions. The second part summarizes results from the literature search and discusses relevant findings. Findings show siloed efforts in POE continue to be the primary barrier to the mainstreaming of POE in Canada. Canada is, however, making headway in post-occupancy verification programmes and these programmes have the potential to pave the way for POE as an industry best-practice. The paper concludes with several recommendations to advance POE efforts, including establishing pan-Canadian performance indicators, building bridges between sectors and continuing to normalize data collection and sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-occupancy evaluation
• building performance
• buildings in use
• building performance evaluation
• Canada

Author contributions

The planning of this paper was collaborative. The first author produced the search protocol, conducted the literature search and drafted the original manuscript. The second author oversaw this process and critically reviewed and edited the content of the manuscript through its development. Both approved the final submitted version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Toronto Metropolitan University and a Mitacs Accelerate Internship grant (IT27621) with industry partner, Montgomery Sisam Architects.