Performance and Building: Problems of Evaluation

Abstract

Performance evaluation of built facilities has traditionally reflected a product/hardware bias, and has been primarily concerned with the performance measurement of building subsystems. There are two shortcomings of this approach: First, the implied assumption that a building's performance is equal to the aggregated performance of its components is not valid. A completed building, like most complex systems is much more than the sum of its parts. Second, and much more importantly, the focus of performance appraisal on individual subsystems ignores the interdependencies among them. As a result, this second assumption actively encourages suboptimization of parts at the expense of the whole product, namely, the building. To overcome these shortcomings, an organizationally sensitive performance‐evaluation model is proposed that recommends an overall performance evaluation of the building process as a function of the well‐being of its task organizations.