Rethinking Performance Gaps: A Regenerative Sustainability Approach to Built Environment Performance Assessment

Abstract

Globally, there are significant challenges to meeting built environment performance targets. The gaps found between the predicted performance of new or retrofit buildings and their actual performance impede an understanding of how to achieve these targets. This paper points to the importance of reliable and informative building performance assessments. We argue that if we are to make progress in achieving our climate goals, we need to reframe built environment performance with a shift to net positive goals, while recognising the equal importance of human and environmental outcomes. This paper presents a simple conceptual framework for built environment performance assessment and identifies three performance gaps: (i) Prediction Gap (e.g., modelled and measured energy, water consumption); (ii) Expectations Gap (e.g., occupant expectations in pre- and post-occupancy evaluations); and, (iii) Outcomes Gap (e.g., thermal comfort measurements and survey results). We question which of measured or experienced performance is the ‘true’ performance of the built environment. We further identify a “Prediction Paradox”, indicating that it may not be possible to achieve more accurate predictions of building performance at the early design stage. Instead, we propose that Performance Gaps be seen as creative resources, used to improve the resilience of design strategies through continuous monitoring.

Developing an Evaluation Protocol for the Toronto Public Library (TPL) System Through the Application of a Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) of a Branch Library to Inform its Retrofit Strategy

“…In office buildings labour costs per square meter are significantly higher compared to energy costs per square metre. (Coleman, S.;Touchie, M.;& Peters, T., 2018). Occupants and users can play a critical role in identifying and correcting operational problems providing that the building systems are easily accessible and understandable and the occupants are willing to use them (Cole et al, 2008).…”

“…To address the performance gap, Coleman et al (2018) recently proposed a new approach comprising two steps. The first step stresses the importance of reframing the goals of a BPE.…”

“…The first step stresses the importance of reframing the goals of a BPE. It comprises 1) establishing the goals of an evaluation on a wider sustainability perspective, acknowledging the equal relevance of both environmental and human outcomes, 2) moving beyond net zero to net positive approaches, and 3) expanding the concentration on individual buildings to include neighbourhood-scale built environment systems (Coleman et al, 2018).…”

The Social Contexts of Resilient Architecture

“…Some progress is being made in terms of considering buildings and people, in particular new research is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the significant role that building users play in how a building performs compared to design intentions. The difference between user expectations and design intentions and buildings in use are known as "performance gaps" (Coleman, Touchie, Robinson, & Peters, 2018). Understanding the reasons behind the gaps, has been an area of research for the last five or so years in academia.…”

The Collaborative Management of Sustained Unsustainability: On the Performance of Participatory Forms of Environmental Governance

“…Thus, rather than thinking in terms of performance deficits or performance gaps [40], we are suggesting that decentralized and participatory forms of governance may have become so prevalent precisely because they help to avoid a structural transformation of modern societies, while, at the same time, being uniquely suited to the articulation and experience-i.e., the performance-of genuine commitment to comprehensive socio-ecological change. This unorthodox interpretation of environmental governance and of performance does not seek to make any normative defense of policy approaches that, quite evidently, do not deliver structural socio-ecological change.…”