Product installation during the construction process impacts the overall performance and durability of a building. However, when the building construction industry fails to address installation quality the product performance is affected. This research explores the importance of optimized product installation and how it affects product performance. During the installation period, standard product performance can be affected by the information known about the product and the amount of time put into the assembly of the product. The building products can vary from insulation, A/C units, water heaters, etc. An installers' workmanship can impact standard product performance if they have limited knowledge about the product and its operational functionality. The products' prescribed functionality could be altered due to less than standardized installation practices. Improper installation of a product can lead to major deviations in performance that can increase maintenance costs over the lifetime of the product in addition to adverse effects of the product during its normal life cycle. Labor sensitivity is an underrepresented aspect of building construction that contributes to the problem of energy inefficiency. The goal of this work is to develop a metric that can quantify how relatively sensitive a building product and overall building performance is to the efforts of time and knowledge, specifically during the installation process. From this metric, the impact of installation on performance for different products can be compared through numerical values, highlighting products that require special care during the installation process to ensure desired performance.

A case study was conducted on 44 residential homes using both traditional house wrap and ZIP System systems to measure the overall airtightness and compare estimated energy usages. The labor, material, and overhead and profit (O&P) costs were analyzed and used to determine the optimal choice for long-term benefits in terms of cost and performance. The impact of insulation installation is considered a key factor in improving the strategy of reducing energy consumption. Improved installation practices can affect the airtightness of common wall assemblies to reduce the building energy performance gaps and provide insight on how to allocate resources better. A framework was developed to analyze operational costs and building energy performance to address how installation quality is a factor in the return of investment in building construction for heating and cooling systems within the thermal envelope. With this methodology, aggressive energy performance goals will be met while balancing the tradeoff between installation techniques and building systems efficiency based on the introduced probabilistic investment return (PIR) metric.