Browsing by Author "Ergen, E."

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10

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Acoustical comfort in office buildings
(Global Science and Technology Forum, 2019) Artan, D.; Ergen, E.; Tekçe, Işılay; Interior Architecture and Environmental Design; TEKÇE, Işılay
This paper aims to provide insight to decision makers such as designers, facility managers and renovators of office buildings on how office occupants perceive acoustical comfort. In the first step, a detailed literature analysis was performed to determine the main criteria that can be used to measure acoustical comfort in office buildings. In the second step, interviews were undertaken with 12 facility managers, and work orders related to acoustical comfort were extracted from facility management and computerized maintenance management software systems. As a result, a list of occupant feedback and complaint types related to acoustical comfort were determined and a hierarchical structure was established. In the third step, a survey was conducted with 308 office employees to determine (1) the importance and satisfaction levels in acoustical comfort criteria and (2) number of respondents who have complaints in each complaint type. The findings present the common reasons behind acoustical discomfort and consequences of poor acoustical performance. It can be concluded that the occupants are more dissatisfied with the lack of acoustical privacy than with the level of noise or echo. In terms of noise level, occupants are most dissatisfied by ‘noise due to conversations’ compared to other sources of noise such as footsteps, ventilation or office equipment.
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The contextual information requirements for collection and use of occupant feedback in BIM-enabled FM
(Emerald, 2023) Artan, D.; Tekçe, Işılay; Yilmaz, N.; Ergen, E.; Interior Architecture and Environmental Design; TEKÇE, Işılay
Purpose: Occupant feedback is crucial for healthy, comfortable and productive offices. Existing facility management (FM) systems are limited in effective use of occupant feedback, as they fail to collect the vital contextual information (e.g. related building element, space) associated with the feedback. The purpose of this study is to formalise the contextual information requirements for structured collection of occupant feedback for rapid diagnosis and resolution of problems and integrating occupant feedback with building information modelling (BIM) for making use of its visualisation and analysis capabilities, and eventually for effective use of occupant feedback in FM operations. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-methods approach was conducted in four steps: (1) identifying occupant feedback types (e.g. echo in meeting room) in office buildings, (2) examining the current practice in collecting and processing occupant feedback via use cases, (3) determining the contextual information requirements via expert interviews and (4) validation of the information requirements via a BIM-integrated prototype. Findings: The findings present the contextual information requirements for 107 occupant feedback types grouped under thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustic comfort, visual comfort, building design and facility services. Practical implications: Feedback-specific contextual information items enable structured data collection and help to avoid missing data and minimise the time lost in manual data entry and recursive interaction with the occupants during FM operations. Originality/value: The contextual information requirements determined are expected to enhance occupant satisfaction and FM performance in office buildings by better use of the occupant feedback and integration into BIM-enabled FM and can be extended to other building types in future studies by using the proposed methodology.
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An empirical study of visual comfort in office buildings
(Springer, 2021) Tekçe, Işılay; Artan, D.; Ergen, E.; Interior Architecture and Environmental Design; TEKÇE, Işılay
Visual comfort is an important indicator of both occupant satisfaction and work performance. The main goal of this study is to present the visual comfort-related factors that influence occupant satisfaction. To achieve this goal, a detailed literature analysis was conducted to determine the main factors that can be used to evaluate the effect of visual comfort on the satisfaction of office workers. Afterward, interviews were conducted with 12 facility managers, and related work orders created by the facility management teams were investigated to determine visual comfort-related complaint types. Based on the collected data, a hierarchical structure of visual comfort factors was created. Finally, 308 office workers were surveyed to determine (1) the number of respondents with complaints related to each visual comfort factor, (2) the level of importance of the visual comfort related factors, and (3) office worker’s satisfaction levels for each factor. The findings reveal that the largest gap between the perceived importance and satisfaction appears in daylighting and visual privacy. The designers, facility managers, and renovators need to think of design strategies to provide more privacy and access to daylight to occupants in their working environments.
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Formalization of occupant feedback and integration with BIM in office buildings
(ASCE, 2021-01-01) Ergen, E.; Kula, B.; Işın, Gürşans Güven; Artan, D.; Civil Engineering; IŞIN, Gürşans Güven
Occupant feedback is not effectively used in the facility management (FM) phase for operations and maintenance activities as well as retrofit and refurbishment investment decisions. One of the reasons is related to incomplete or mostly unstructured occupant feedback data. The goal of this paper is (1) to formalize occupant feedback in office buildings by developing a semantic data model, and (2) to implement the semantic data model in a prototype to demonstrate that capturing and storing occupant feedback and integrating it with building information modeling (BIM) improves the experience of both occupants and FM personnel. Interviews were conducted with office occupants and facility managers, and use cases were created to develop the semantic data model. This data model was implemented in the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema and a case study was conducted, in which a prototype for collecting occupant feedback integrated with BIM was developed to test the proposed approach. The applicability, practicability, and usability of the system were measured via usability tests that were applied to the occupants and FM team members. The findings showed that the proposed semantic data model can be utilized to store occupant feedback in a structured manner and to integrate this information with BIM-enabled FM systems. This approach facilitates (1) continuous collection of occupant feedback along with the vital contextual information including geometric data, and (2) effective utilization of this information in FM operations by providing visualization and analysis capabilities.
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Influence of office building design on occupant satisfaction
(IOP Publishing, 2022) Artan, D.; Ergen, E.; Tekçe, Işılay; Yılmaz, N.; Interior Architecture and Environmental Design; TEKÇE, Işılay
The objective of this study is to examine the influence of building design on office occupants by analysing empirical data on their satisfaction levels and prevalent complaints. A methodology involving literature review, expert interviews, and a field survey with 308 office employees was adopted to acquire the empirical data. The findings reveal that office occupants think Amount of Space as the most important parameter, followed by Layout, and Furniture. On the other hand, occupants are least satisfied by Amount of Space, followed by Interior Design and Layout. Insufficient social areas, insufficient work space, and layout of the work environment, distraction caused by human circulation due to office layout, and ergonomics of the furniture are the most common complaints. The results show that average importance level in each building design parameter is higher than or equal to the average satisfaction level. The largest gap between the perceived importance and satisfaction appears in Amount of Space and Layout. The results are expected to provide insight to designers, facility managers, and renovators of office buildings on how office occupants perceive office building design and frequent complaints encountered in the offices.
Open Access
Modelling information flow of occupant feedback in office buildings
(International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction, 2018) Artan, D.; Dönmez, D.; Tekçe, Işılay; Ergen, E.; Interior Architecture and Environmental Design; TEKÇE, Işılay
Occupant comfort plays an important role in office buildings in terms of environmental, social, and economic aspects. Facility managers need to evaluate occupant feedback to moderate the negative consequences on office users and ultimately on the corporations that occupy office spaces. However, in the current facility management systems, occupant feedback is not effectively collected and evaluated; thus, facility managers cannot utilize this information in making critical decisions when operating, maintaining and retrofitting office facilities. This paper presents the initial results of an ongoing research study, which focus es on integrating occupant feedback with Building Information Model (BIM) for assisting decision-makers in the facility management phase. The first step of this research study was to identify the information items that are required to represent occupant feedback for effective use in the facility management phase. To identify the required information items, interviews were performed with office users at ten office buildings and use cases were developed. To validate the use cases, interviews were performed with twelve facility managers. The aim of this paper is to present a sample of the use cases developed and describe the occupant feedback information flow observed in the office buildings. The results show that the occupant feedback data include detailed information related to: (1) location where the problem is observed, which is represented by building, and/or floor, and/or room, and/or façade, and/or table/zone/region depending on the case; (2) location of the user, that is represented by building, floor, room, table/zone/region; (3) source of the problem that is represented by type of building element and related building element; (4) source location, which specifies the location of a problem source that is different than the location where the problem is observed; and (5) time.
Open Access
Rateworkspace: BIM integrated post-occupancy evaluation system for office buildings
(International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction, 2022-04) Artan, D.; Ergen, E.; Kula, B.; Işın, Gürşans Güven; Civil Engineering; IŞIN, Gürşans Güven
The feedback obtained from occupants regarding their comfort needs and performance of buildings is critical for assessing occupant satisfaction, identifying the operation and maintenance (O&M) issues in time and for improving resource efficiency in buildings. Current facility management (FM) systems and occupant feedback collection practices, however, have limitations in supporting effective decision-making in FM, as they lack the necessary contextual data related to the occupant feedback (e.g., building geometry, systems, elements). Building Information Modeling (BIM)-enabled FM systems are used for combining different types of FM information with building models; however, occupant feedback is still not effectively utilized in FM since it is not integrated with BIM. In this study, a BIM integrated post-occupancy evaluation system prototype is developed for: (1) collecting occupant feedback along with the contextual information related to the feedback items in a structured way, and (2) presenting this information as integrated with BIM to the facility managers. This enables conducting spatio-temporal queries and supports effective decision-making by visualizing the collected feedback. The prototype was designed by using qualitative shadowing with FM teams to identify information needs and use case analysis to determine how contextual data integrated with BIM could be collected from office occupants who are non-technical persons with limited information on building models. This paper identifies the FM query categories that are required to process the occupant feedback and describes the RateWorkSpace prototype developed for office buildings. The deployment of the prototype in a real-world office demonstrates that the proposed system is applicable, practical, usable, and that real-time building performance data can be both collected and analysed with the developed system. This has the potential to increase the effectiveness of the FM and O&M processes, and help to create office spaces with optimized energy use and occupant comfort that also supports occupant well-being and productivity.
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A rule-based methodology for automated progress monitoring of construction activities: A case for masonry work
(International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction, 2019) Işın, Gürşans Güven; Ergen, E.; Civil Engineering; IŞIN, Gürşans Güven
The conventional approach that is used to monitor construction projects is to collect progress data from the construction site through visual investigation. This results in deficient and sometimes erroneous data, and leads to inefficiencies in project control, delays and cost overruns. To address these problems in building construction projects, an approach was developed to automatically monitor activity progress by tracking major construction equipment and bulk materials using sensor-based technologies that are cost-effective and easy to deploy. In this approach data obtained from sensors (e.g., load sensor) and/or other sensor-based technologies (i.e., Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)), which were deployed on major construction resources, were fused using rule-based algorithms to determine the activity progress. This progress data was compared with human-generated site related data (e.g., schedules, site reports) to determine the activity performance. This paper presents the developed data fusion approach and rule-based data fusion algorithms that incorporate the domain-specific heuristic information for determining the activity's overall progress. To validate the proposed approach, a proof-of-concept prototype was deployed and tested at a construction site for monitoring the progress of masonry work. The results show that the developed approach achieved 95% average accuracy in identifying the progress of the masonry work that was monitored during the field tests. The main contributions of this study are the rule-based data fusion approach and the rules that were developed for processing data from equipment and bulk materials. These rules can be used to determine the progress of other activities that use similar resources.
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Structural equation model of occupant satisfaction for evaluating the performance of office buildings
(Springer Nature, 2020-08) Tekçe, Işılay; Ergen, E.; Artan, D.; Interior Architecture and Environmental Design; TEKÇE, Işılay
Measuring occupant satisfaction and collecting feedback is critical for evaluating building performance, shaping comfort, effective decision-making in building improvements, and consequently enhancing the well-being of occupants. Numerous post-occupancy evaluation tools have been developed for examining occupant satisfaction in different building types; however, they are criticized in the recent studies for failing to (1) empirically examine the interrelated influence of a broad range of factors on occupant satisfaction, (2) include expert opinion from the industry in the indicator determination process, (3) collect contextual information along with the feedback in real-time and in a continuous manner and (4) provide effective mechanisms to integrate occupant feedback in the building models to enable visualization and performing queries on feedback items. The purpose of this paper is to develop an occupant satisfaction measurement model for monitoring the perceived performance of office buildings. A hierarchical structural model was developed based on the literature review, analysis of occupant feedback records in office buildings, and focus group meetings with facility managers to determine the constructs of occupant satisfaction. This model was empirically validated via structural equation modeling (SEM) using the survey data collected from 300 office occupants. The proposed SEM model, which adopts a total of 27 indicators across six dimensions, is found to be highly satisfactory indicating a strong association between dimensions and occupant satisfaction. The findings emphasize that building design and facility service dimensions need to be considered along with physical comfort dimensions when determining occupant satisfaction. The main contribution of the paper is the empirically validated, holistic, SEM model of occupant satisfaction, which is developed based on current practice and industry practitioners' feedback and integrates building design and facility services with physical comfort dimensions. In the following phase of the research, the developed occupant satisfaction measurement model was used as the basis for designing a prototype, which enables decision-makers to collect occupant feedback continuously and integrate it with building information modeling to visualize and perform queries on feedback items. Eventually, this measurement model is expected to contribute to making more effective decisions based on the actual performance of the facility in the post-occupancy phase and enhance building performance as well as occupant well-being and productivity.
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Tracking major resources for automated progress monitoring of construction activities: masonry work case
(Emerald, 2021-10-21) Işın, Gürşans Güven; Ergen, E.; Civil Engineering; IŞIN, Gürşans Güven
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to monitor the progress of construction activities in an automated way by using sensor-based technologies for tracking multiple resources that are used in building construction. Design/methodology/approach: An automated on-site progress monitoring approach was proposed and a proof-of-concept prototype was developed, followed by a field experimentation study at a high-rise building construction site. The developed approach was used to integrate sensor data collected from multiple resources used in different steps of an activity. It incorporated the domain-specific heuristics that were related to the site layout conditions and method of activity. Findings: The prototype estimated the overall progress with 95% accuracy. More accurate and up-to-date progress measurement was achieved compared to the manual approach, and the need for visual inspections and manual data collection from the field was eliminated. Overall, the field experiments demonstrated that low-cost implementation is possible, if readily available or embedded sensors on equipment are used. Originality/value: Previous studies either monitored one particular piece of equipment or the developed approaches were only applicable to limited activity types. This study demonstrated that it is technically feasible to determine progress at the site by fusing sensor data that are collected from multiple resources during the construction of building superstructure. The rule-based reasoning algorithms, which were developed based on a typical work practice of cranes and hoists, can be adapted to other activities that involve transferring bulk materials and use cranes and/or hoists for material handling.