Subjective Assessments of High Performance Buildings: What the Numbers Don’t Tell You

When measuring the performance of a building, whether new or retrofitted, it’s easy to get caught up in the metrics: the speeds, the volumes, the percentages, the of lengths time…the list goes on and on. But what many of us forget is the importance of subjective assessments when evaluating the operations of our high performance building (HPB).

The numbers don’t tell us everything. Consider these subjective considerations when determining progress and success:

• The building’s performance against company-wide goals
• The advancements made against identified gaps
• The enhancement of a company’s brand
• The improvement of organizational and occupant effectiveness

I want to especially focus on this last point because it’s a critical factor in determining success, albeit one that that can’t be easily determined by a few straightforward measurements. And yet, the comfort and health of occupants are very important to a company’s entire performance, including the quality of work, absenteeism, morale, retaining talent and more.

The numbers don’t tell us whether there are any occupant health concerns because of the building, or whether the environment is impacting productivity or even whether the cost of system downtime impacts the organization’s ability to achieve its mission. But these are all areas that building managers may know or can team with other company leaders to determine, set goals, and measure against (objectively and subjectively). The assessments can be determined by talking to department leadership, employee surveys, and pulling in other metrics like absenteeism numbers.

Considering these types of qualitative assessments along with measurement data from the dashboard will give leadership a more complete picture of the building's performance and health. There are options for creating custom reports that can help give insight into the more subjective trends.

Go here to learn more about how the right intelligence tools will consider objective and subjective measurements to help your HPB hit peak performance.