Occupants in the Building Design Decision-Making Process

Building occupants affect building performance in many ways, depending on how the building design responds to what occupants need, the amount of control that building designers have afforded them, and how well the design team has anticipated the way they will want to interact with the building and its systems in the future. This chapter discusses the challenge of integrating considerations related to building occupancy and occupant behavior into the decision-making process of building designers. It outlines the role of information management in coordinating information needed by designers at different design stages and contexts, and the range of occupancy-related factors to be considered in design practice, to facilitate performance and risk assessment in relation to legislation, regulations, and the interests of the client. This practice-based context forms the background for a discussion on how information and decisions about occupants could flow throughout the design process in a coherent and coordinated way. It concludes by proposing a knowledge management template for recording and supporting information transfer regarding occupancy throughout the design decision-making process, which can fit within and support current industry tools such as building information modeling and building performance simulation.