I couldn’t agree more with Rab Bennetts’ call for an accepted, industry-wide methodology for measuring the performance of buildings (11 February, page 15).

A huge amount of effort has gone into what might be described as the “pre-design” stages of the process but very little into the rather more important aspect of post-occupancy evaluation.

Since 2000 RyderHKS has been researching the impact of the office environment upon occupiers and the results have not made pleasant reading. Two-thirds of people find their workplace at best average and 14% can’t think of anything they like about their workplace at all!

It is clear that as an industry we are not learning the lessons from the performance of existing work environments. In an attempt to change this, RyderHKS is about to launch a consultancy service that combines the feedback from existing work environments with an analysis of specific future occupier needs. The service will benefit industry members, from developers wishing to ensure that their buildings meet the needs of the marketplace through to occupiers.

It is our intention to share this research and the subsequent analysis with the construction industry in the hope that collectively we can assess the true performance of our buildings.

Simon Dunstan, RyderHKS

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