Post-Occupancy Evaluation

Almost nobody goes back. When they do, they walk round with the client, hear that everyone is very happy, and leave. The visit that is worth making asks different questions, looks at what people have changed rather than what they say, and ends with findings sent to someone who can use them.

Workflow

Step 1. Establish what was intended, before going

Ask, in one message:

1. What did the project set out to achieve? The brief, the narrative, any stated target. Point at design-narrative and brief-review.
2. How long has it been occupied, and through which seasons? A building visited in one season has been half seen.
3. Who is there: occupants, staff, managers, the people who maintain it?
4. Has anything already been raised: complaints, defects, changes made?
5. Was it commissioned properly, and was there any seasonal commissioning?
6. Is anyone measuring anything: energy, temperature, occupancy?
7. Who is paying for this visit, and what do they want from it? A client, the practice's own learning, a certification requirement, or a dispute.

Question 7 matters. A visit made for the practice's learning and one made because a client is unhappy are different visits and should not be confused, and the second one is not this skill.

Step 2. Look before asking

The order is the method. What people have done is more reliable than what they say.

Walk the building and record, without a question asked:

• What has been changed. Furniture moved, a door propped, a room used for something else, a screen put up, a sign added, a lock fitted, a heater brought in, a blind taped down, a controller covered with a note.
• What is worn. The route people actually take shows on the floor. It is often not the one drawn.
• What is unused. A space that is empty at the time it should be busy.
• What is overfull. Storage that overflowed, a room with more people than it was for.
• What is broken and has not been fixed, which says something about how the building is maintained.

Every handwritten sign in a building is a design failure somebody papered over. Photograph all of them; that alone is worth the visit.

Step 3. Ask the questions that do not produce politeness

Asking whether people like the building produces yes. Ask instead:

• What do you do differently here from your last building?
• What do you have to explain to a new person on their first day?
• What have you moved, and why?
• What do you do when it is too hot, too cold, too bright, too loud?
• What has to be booked, queued for, or waited on?
• Where do you go when you want to be away from people?
• What breaks?
• What do visitors get wrong?

Ask the people who maintain and clean it separately, and give that conversation as much time. They know more about the building than anyone, they are almost never asked, and cleanability is where finishes fail. Point at design-interior.

Step 4. Keep three columns apart

Finding	Observed / Reported / Measured	By whom	When

• Observed is what was seen. Strongest.
• Reported is what somebody said. Real, and it is their experience, not a fact about the building.
• Measured is an instrument reading, with whose instrument and when.

Never merge them. Most POE reports are entirely reported and read as though they were measured, which is how a finding gets dismissed by the one person who needed to act on it.

Step 5. Compare against what was intended, and be honest

Against Step 1, for each stated intention:

Intention	What is happening	Gap	Whose

Whose sorts each into: the design, the construction, the commissioning, the operation, or the brief being wrong in the first place. All five are real findings and the last one is the most useful and the least reported.

Include what worked. A POE that lists only failures teaches nothing about what to repeat, and the practice will quietly drop the thing that was working.

Step 6. Send it to someone, or it was not worth doing

Each finding has a destination, and this is the step that is usually missing:

Finding	Goes to	Why them	Sent?

• The practice, for the next project: lessons-learned.
• The client's facilities team, where it is operational.
• The commissioning agent, where it is a system never set up properly.
• The contractor or the warranty, where it is a defect.
• The design team's own standards, where it is something to stop doing.
• The occupants, where the answer is that something can be adjusted and nobody told them.

Report the count of findings with no destination. Those are the ones that disappear.

Step 7. Save

Ask where. Then, separately, put the practice-facing findings into lessons-learned, because that is the file read at the start of the next project and this one will not be.

Rules

• Look before asking.
• Photograph every handwritten sign.
• Interview the maintenance and cleaning staff separately, and at length.
• Keep observed, reported and measured in three columns and never merge them.
• Sort every gap into design, construction, commissioning, operation, or brief.
• Record what worked, not only what failed.
• Every finding names a destination, and the count with none is reported.
• Never supply a benchmark or a satisfaction scale.

Anti-patterns

• Walking round with the client and asking whether they are happy.
• A report entirely of reported opinion, presented as findings.
• Visiting in one season.
• Skipping the cleaners.
• Listing failures only.
• Blaming the occupants for using the building differently from the drawing.
• Confusing a commissioning failure with a design failure.
• Writing a report nobody receives.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.