Nowadays, facility managers and related staffs are facing with much maintenance requests every day. The more complicated building system generates the more diverse and complex maintenance issues. With the limited budget and staff, not all the maintenance requests can be solved immediately. To schedule the maintenance work, facility managers first consider the impact of requested problem on system failure and life safety. Besides these two factors, the author proposed the importance of considering the energy efficiency and occupant satisfaction based on the former research for sustainability. This paper firstly tries to quantify the occupant satisfaction for normal daily maintenance requests which will provide the facility managers with suggestions on work prioritization. For a long time, it is a difficult task to quantify the occupant satisfaction, even though there are enough researches concerning the people satisfaction. In this research, author first designed a structured questionnaire including normal maintenance issues and they are measured by different factors such as thermal impact, acoustic impact, and so on. Then based on the classical disconfirmation theory, a framework was built to prioritize numerous works based on occupant satisfaction. For energy efficiency, due to the limitation of collecting real measured data, this paper referred the work from Lawrance Lab. They conducted the research to simulate the daily HVAC faults to quantify the energy impact through EnergyPlus, which provided the data of energy increase for some daily HVAC faults. An agent based model is proposed to both consider these two factors. Simulation was used to verify the framework and the result showed that the total satisfaction level and energy efficiency can be increased by 30% and 97% respectively.

There is little empirical evidence in the literature to support industry claims about how green schools tend to have better indoor environmental quality (IEQ) than conventional ones and how teachers in green schools tend to feel better about their schools’ IEQ than those in conventional ones. There is also little empirical evidence in the literature about the impact of improved IEQ in literature about the impact of improved IEQ in schools on teachers’ well-being and their levels of satisfaction with their indoor environments. This research is based on a collaborative partnership with the Government of Manitoba Public Schools Finance Board, and three different public school divisions in Manitoba. It aims to develop and validate a comprehensive methodology to evaluate schools’ IEQ, teachers’ well-being and satisfaction with it, and the relationship between these two aspects. The research evaluated these specific aspects within a sample of three rural schools in Southern Manitoba, Canada: one middle-aged, conventional school; one new, non-green school; and one new, green school certified using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Rating System. The methodology developed in this thesis employs three main data collection techniques: 1) field measurements using an existing mobile instrument cart to capture environmental indicators of thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting quality and acoustics quality in classrooms, 2) a field observation form to record the physical conditions of the evaluated classrooms, and 3) an occupant survey to evaluate teachers’ satisfaction with their classrooms’ IEQ.

An overarching aim of this research was to investigate the comprehensive value of green residential buildings as seen from two perspectives: that of the developer and that of the occupant (the customer). The dissertation consists of studies presented in seven papers.  The studies conducted to investigate the developer’s perspective focused on construction cost and potential profit (papers I and VII). The customer’s perspective was examined with three approaches: the impact that energy and environment have on the decision to purchase (or rent) an apartment (paper V), willingness to pay for a green apartment (paper VI) and finally, the occupants’ satisfaction with the dwelling and indoor environment (papers II, III and IV).  The first paper examines whether increased investment costs are profitable, taking into account the reduction in operating costs. The investment viability is approached by comparing investment in conventional and green residential building, particularly passive houses, using real construction and post-occupancy conditions. The increased investment costs in energy-efficient building were also the focus of paper VII. In this paper, the aim was to study how technologies used in energy-efficient residential building construction affect the available saleable floor area and how this impacts on the profitability of the investment. Potential losses and gains of saleable floor area in energy-efficient buildings were assessed using a modelled building and analysed with the help of the average construction cost. Papers II and IV present results from a study of occupants’ satisfaction and indoor environmental qualities. Both papers aim at comparing and analysing responses from occupants living in green and conventional buildings. Paper III focuses on a similar subject, but investigates occupants’ satisfaction among all adults living in multi-family buildings in Sweden, providing a national context for the results presented in papers II and IV. The results indicate that occupants are generally satisfied with their dwellings, but indoor environment proved to have a statistically significant effect on overall satisfaction. The results in paper V indicate that energy and environmental factors have a minor impact on customers’ decision to purchase or rent an apartment. However, availability of information on building energy and environmental performance may have an effect on the likelihood of the buyers’ being interested in environmental qualities and consequently an impact on their decision. The study presented in paper VI shows that customer interest in energy and environmental factors has a significant impact on stated willingness to pay for green dwellings. The paper discusses the stated willingness to pay for low-energy buildings and buildings with an environmental certificate and attempts to assess the rationale of the stated willingness to pay for low-energy dwellings given potential energy savings. / Fokus i detta forskningsprojekt har legat på att undersöka värdet av gröna bostäder ur ett brett perspektiv, dvs både genom att studera byggherrens och de boendes (kundens) synpunkter. I avhandlingen ingår sju uppsatser. Undersökningen av byggherrens synpunkter fokuserades på kostnader och potentiella inkomster (uppsats I och VII). Kundernas åsikter undersöktes på tre olika sätt: vilken effekt energi och miljö faktorer hade på beslut att köpa eller hyra en lägenhet (uppsats V), betalningsvilja för gröna bostäder (uppsats VI) och slutligen de boendes trivsel samt nöjdhet med inomhusmiljön (uppsats II,III och IV). Den första uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka om ökningen av investeringskostnader vid byggande av gröna byggnader kan täckas av framtida energibesparingar och minskning av driftkostnad. Investeringens lönsamhet undersöktes genom att jämföra skillnader i byggkostnader mellan konventionella och gröna bostäder med skillnader i driftskostnader givet olika antaganden om energipriser och räntekrav. Huvudfokus i uppsats VII var också byggkostnader, men denna gång undersöktes hur nya tekniska lösningar påverkar boarea och lönsamhet av energieffektiva bostäder.  Genom att konstruera en modell av ett typhus analyserades potentiella ökningar i boarea med nya lösningar och hur detta påverkade lönsamheten i olika geografiska lägen (prisnivåer). Uppsatserna II och IV presenterar resultat från boendeundersökningar. Båda uppsatserna syftar till att undersöka boendes trivsel och nöjdhet med inomhusmiljö samt att testa skillnaden i svar från boende i gröna och konventionella bostäder.  Uppsats III fokuserar också på inomhusmiljön, men analysen gjordes på svaren som samlades in under Boverkets projekt BETSI och resultaten är därmed representativa för alla vuxna som bor i flerfamiljshus i Sverige. Uppsats III ger därmed en national kontext för uppsatserna II och IV. Resultaten visar att boende trivs i sina bostäder, men inomhusmiljön har en statistiks signifikanta effekt på allmän nöjdhet faktor.. Resultaten i uppsats V tyder på att energi- och miljöaspekter spelar mindre roll i beslutet att köpa eller hyra en lägenhet. Den synliga informationens tillgänglighet angående byggnadens energi- och miljöprestanda, påverkar kundens intresse för dessa faktorer och därmed indirekt hushållets beslut. Resultaten i uppsats VI pekar på att kunderna, som är intresserade av byggnaders energi och miljö prestanda, är villiga att betala mer för gröna bostäder. I uppsats 6 diskuteras betalningsvilja för låg-energi byggnader och för byggnader med miljöcertifikat samt utvärderas om den angivna betalningsviljan är rationell beslut när man tar hänsyn till nuvärdet av framtida energibesparingar. / <p>QC 20131014</p>