Purpose Any building refurbishment is challenging and school buildings offer no exception. They are increasingly in need of refurbishment due to their age and evolving teaching and learning. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of literature on sustainable refurbishment so as to identify key lessons from selected successful refurbishment projects. The review findings are expected to contribute to the development of refurbishment plans in an effective and innovative manner that should extend building’s service life, focus on resource efficiency, and comfort their users. It will also contribute to knowledge base of refurbishment and suggest future directions for research. Design/methodology/approach The paper has undertaken a literature review on the sustainability assessment of buildings and frameworks for sustainable refurbishment. Besides, the work also provides a review of recent successful refurbishment projects to collect and structure systems experiences which can be adopted in developing a sustainable refurbishment strategy for school buildings. Findings Findings include three groups of lessons in terms of reasons, process and barriers in the selected refurbishment projects that assist stakeholders to prepare a suitable refurbishment plan for their school buildings. The potential of 3D scanners and BIM applications in the refurbishment process will also be reviewed in order to develop a proposed framework of 3D scanner vs BIM for the refurbishment process. Recommendations highlight the role of a national strategy as a driving factor for applying the advantages of information technology to enhance optimal solution selection processes to get better and more sustainable results. Originality/value The conceptual framework for 3D scanner and BIM applications within sustainable refurbishment for school buildings is currently under researched, and the findings aimed to address such a gap when considering 3D scanners and BIM applications in the refurbishment process.

Abstract:In this paper we challenge the notion that "green" buildings can achieve greater productivity than buildings that are not accredited as "green". For nearly two decades, research has produced apparent evidence which indicates that the design of a "green" building can enhance the productivity of its occupants. This relationship between building design and productivity is claimed to be achieved through compliance with internal environmental quality (IEQ) criteria of Green rating tools. This paper reviews methods of measuring productivity and the appropriateness of the metrics used for measuring IEQ in office environments. This review is supported by the results of a survey of office building users which identifies social factors to be significantly more important than environmental factors in trying to correlate productivity and IEQ. It also presents the findings of observations that were discretely carried out on user-response in green buildings. These findings demonstrate that, despite a building's compliance with IEQ criteria, occupants still resort to exceptional measures to alter their working environment in a bid to achieve comfort. The work has been carried out on "green" buildings in New Zealand. These buildings are rated based on the NZ "Green Star" system which has adopted the Australian "green star" system with its roots in BREEAM. Despite this, the results of this research are applicable to many other "green" rating systems. The paper concludes that methods of measuring productivity are flawed, that IEQ criteria for building design is unrepresentative of how occupants perceive the environment and that this can lead to an architecture that has few of the inherent characteristics of good environmental design.

Abstract:In this paper, we investigated the reason(s) why natural ventilation is not as popular as air-conditioned or mixed-mode ventilation systems in Green-rated office buildings in New Zealand. To achieve this, we had three objectives. Firstly, we reviewed the Green Star criteria for thermal comfort in office buildings to ascertain which ventilation system the NZ Green Star rating tool promotes. Secondly, we ascertained the perception of occupants in office buildings regarding thermal comfort. This was followed by an interview with building experts regarding factors that affect the use of natural ventilation in New Zealand offices. The findings showed that the NZ Green Star thermal comfort criteria encourage the use of mechanical ventilation over natural ventilation which results in designers opting for air conditioning systems in office designs. We observed that occupants of naturally ventilated spaces were least satisfied with the thermal comfort of their offices when compared with occupants of mixed-mode and air-conditioned offices. This study fulfils the need to encourage the use of natural ventilation in office environments by designers and building owners. Further study on other aspects of the indoor environment quality that is related to naturally ventilated systems such as lighting and noise is required in a bid to ascertain its viability in office environments.

Purpose This study aims to answer the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions about the key role players’ influence on the overall productivity outcomes in the lifecycle of residential buildings procured through the traditional route. Design/methodology/approach A mix of exploratory and descriptive research methods was used to obtain feedback from 179 role-players involved in various phases of the residential building lifecycle (RBLC) in New Zealand. Empirical data were analysed using content analysis, multi-attribute method and Friedman’s two-way analysis of variance. Findings Results showed that designers, building owners, main contractors and project managers were the greatest influencers of the productivity outcomes in the RBLC. The priority drivers of these key role-players’ influences on the RBLC productivity outcomes comprised poor brief interpretation, inclination to lowest tender, inadequate prior risk analysis and miscommunication of owner’s requirements and preferences to service providers, respectively. By taking proactive steps to redress their productivity inhibiting acts/omissions as identified in this study, the various role-players could contribute to significant improvement of productivity outcomes in the building lifecycle. Research limitations/implications It was not possible to interview all participants that made up the representative random samples from each role-player group due largely to workload related excuses. As a result, the findings and the conclusions may not be generalised beyond the study scope. However, the study achieved its purpose, as the main intent was to provide hypothetical constructs that could guide further confirmatory/experimental studies for residential buildings as well as for other building types. Practical implications A succinct and easy-to-follow model was developed as implementation pathway for operationalising the key findings of the study in the industry. The model highlights the Owner-Architect-Contractor Influence Triangle (OACIT) as the 20 per cent of the solutions that could deliver 80 per cent of the productivity improvement in the RBLC. Originality/value This study re-examines productivity issues not only from a life-cycle perspective but also from the perspectives of the majority of the key role-players. In addition, the OACIT concept offers a novel productivity improvement tool; it stresses that productivity in the traditionally procured building lifecycle could be optimised if the architect could focus greater attention on brief articulation and the issuance and review of design and specification information. Also, the owner should adopt productivity-enhancing procurement and contract strategies and emphasise more on value-addition and less on lowest tender price.

The purpose of this review is to investigate the use of self-evaluation as a method for measuring the productivity of office workers. The objective is to highlight issues associated with self-evaluation and barriers to its insufficiency in capturing occupant productivity in its totality. The literature includes referred journal and conference papers. A review of available literature was carried out on the subject of perceptions studies and self-evaluation as well as occupant performance in the office environment. Studies that employed the use of self-evaluation (questionnaires or interview) as the sole method of measuring the effect of IEQ on productivity/performance were reviewed. The discussions carried out in this paper show that self-evaluation is compromised by various issues that significantly affect the validity of their results. As such, it is insufficient as a sole method for measuring occupant productivity (cognitive performance) and the influence of IEQ on it. This review is carried out on available literature on past studies. Empirical evidence is required to test the reliability of self -evaluation in measuring productivity and the effect of factors such as IEQ on it. We demonstrated that self-evaluation methods of measuring productivity were affected by various research related issues. They are insufficient and do not accurately measure productivity. As such, it cannot be claimed that a comfortable IEQ results in a productive occupant based on results from self-evaluation studies. If such claims are to be made, more accurate methods of assessment are required. This paper provides a novel view on the reliability of self -evaluation results on the effect of IEQ on productivity.Keywords: Occupant productivity, Indoor Environment Quality, Office environments. IntroductionBuilding performance concerning indoor environment quality (IEQ) has gained increasing attention in recent years. The fact that people spend around 90% of their time indoors (Klepeis et al., 2001) has made the implications of the indoor environment imperative to designers. There is evidence towards a consensus view that the IEQ conditions that result in comfort do, in fact, increase the productivity of occupants (Lan and Lain, 2009;Hameed and Amjad, 2009;Liu et al., 2010; Kekalainen et al., 2010). However, recent studies have findings that indicate that there is no causal link between occupant productivity and IEQ (Zhang et al., 2011;Mak and Lui, 2012;McCunn and Gifford, 2012;Healey and Webster-Mannison, 2012) in office environments. But this assumes that the methods of measuring productivity have validity. Perception study, expressly questionnaires that ask occupants to evaluate their perceived productivity ) is a conventional method that has been used to measure the cognitive performance of workers. A literature review carried out by Onyeizu (2015) wherein the author review past works on the relationship between IEQ and occupant productivity in Green office spaces showed that majority of studies in this subject area had empl...