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Post-Occupancy Evaluation

To get to know the occupancy satisfaction and something to be improved, a 23 questions survey is developed by the Iowa Energy Center. This survey consists of temperature, humidity, air flow, lighting, noise privacy and overall satisfaction. [2] The survey was distributed to the south wing (Office of Consumer Advocate) and north wing (Iowa Utilities Board) respectively. In IUB office, there are 65 workers, while 18 in OCA office. At last, they got 52 respondents in IUB and 10 in OCA.

Some responses also provided various additional written comments on the form:

• Very little or no air movement;

• When blower (heat pump fan) is on, the air movement is fine;

• Ventilation comfort/Air movement/Freshness of Air problems in the enclosed offices;

• Too much air movement;

• There is some window glare at times but can get by;

• Glare from sun in the morning only;

• Too much daylight;

• (Access to daylight) more than enough;

• Very noisy when operable windows are open because of street noise;

• Can get to 80 Deg F in the summer;

• Minor control issue in the winter;

• Temperature shift 1~2 Deg F, generally acceptable;

• Temperature varies a lot on the floors;

• Conversation privacy is low, even in conference rooms;

• Generally satisfied (with the physical environment), compared to other buildings I have worked in;

• Too warm in summer; fine in winter; would like more air movement; noise was an issue before the white noise system was installed. [2]

Fig1. Interior and working places. [1]

Generally, occupants are satisfied with the environment. But we could see that the building occupants are not satisfied with the conversation privacy, telephone privacy. Because of the balance between lighting design and partition design, the noise condition and privacy of conversation could be weakened. [2]

In deed, there are about 40% of occupants dissatisfied with the thermal condition, glare and visual privacy. In the comments, some people also say that there is too much daylight and too warm in summer. 

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