A Systematic Method for Improving Indoor Environment Quality through Occupant Satisfaction Surveys

A systematic method for assessing and improving indoor environment quality (IEQ) isdeveloped for existing and occupied office buildings. The method begins with an occupantsatisfaction survey that is directed to everyone working in a building. The structure of thequestions follows a pattern that offers valuable information of the technical reasons leading todissatisfaction. The questions assess satisfaction with the following IEQ areas: office layout,office furnishings, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting, acoustics, and buildingcleanliness and maintenance.A database of 25 office buildings in Southern Finland has been collected. The average valueof all indoor environment factors in these 25 buildings is 0,85 in scale from 3 to +3. Thisaverage value can be used as a benchmark value to compare workplaces to each other. Officelayout, office furnishings, lighting and cleaning have received higher scores than thermalcomfort, air quality and acoustics. Also the variation between buildings has been bigger inthermal comfort, air quality and acoustics. These are also the areas where most of thetechnical problems have been found. In each building the occupant perception map lays thefoundation for auditing and evaluating the indoor environment quality and for locating thepossible technical problems.