Browsing by Author "Kula, B."

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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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    ArticlePublicationOpen 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.