Barriers to Feedback

Medium term benefits  Built-in capacity for building adaptation to organisational change and growth;

 Finding new uses for buildings;

 Accountability for building performance by architects

 Feeding forward positive and negative lessons learned into the next building cycle.

Long term benefits  Long-term improvements in building performance;

 Improvement in design quality;

 Databases could be created to improve dissemination of feedback information

 Planning and design criteria of specific building types could be created

As can be seen from the table, the short term benefits tend to be based around the users of the building, and how the feedback can help in making sure the user’s needs are met and are the focus of most current feedback techniques. This is despite the fact that all these articles are highlighting other longer-term benefits that are specifically connected to the adaptability agenda. Clearly, for this study, these long term benefits are deemed more important, as they seem to be based around how it is possible to improve decisions that are to be made on future projects, which is what this thesis is striving to achieve.

4.5. Barriers to Feedback

Despite feedback having many perceived benefits, there are also a plethora of barriers that have reduced the impact of feedback on the construction industry.

Duffy (1990) argues that the fundamental reason architects do not evaluate is because the difficulty of putting buildings up is so great, that concern for time post occupancy is ignored. This is also discussed by Blyth & Worthington (2000) who suggest that there are few incentives to evaluate

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A prominent barrier to feedback is a lack of finance. Bordass et al. (2001, p145) highlights this when asking, “Who pays for the survey?” they suggest that probe has been paid for by the government and the publisher, with additional time given free by the occupiers of the buildings and the survey team. Indeed it seems that architects are reluctant to fund POEs suggesting that an architect would have to see value in feedback if they were going to pay for it.

Time and management are also major issues when trying to propose a method of feedback, as the traditional POE relies on the involvement of end users, who may not have the time spare to complete surveys or interviews. Surveys are often left to the facilities management team, as an external team would cost too much. It is suggested that facilities management teams are often understaffed, so an extra job, as well as managing the everyday running of a building is the last thing that is needed (Eley 2001). Furthermore, facilities managers generally exhibit reactive behaviour, seeking rapid action and instant solutions to immediate problems, as this quote by Eley (2001, p166) shows: “Facilities managers like problems they can fix today rather than pointing out potential ones for the future”. Bordass et al. (2005) also disparage the use of facilities managers as the profession to deal with feedback to architects when stating, “Few facilities managers are yet expert at briefing or at interacting with architects”.

Another barrier relates to knowledge requirements. Apart from specific POE companies, there are very few people with the specialist knowledge to carry out a POE. This potentially comes down to the relative short time since the conception of POEs and the fact that they are not taught in traditional architectural education (Zimmerman & Martin 2001, Cooper 2001). However, it is clear that specialist knowledge is required and this could act as a barrier to the uptake of POE’s within the architectural profession.

The fact that feedback does not form part of standard practice is also expected to create a barrier.

Standard practice in the facility delivery process does not recognize the concept of continual improvement or, indeed, any ongoing involvement on the part of the architects (Andreu &

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Levels of investment in R&D in the construction industry are also low with calls for more research to be done on good building and space design (Zimmerman et al. 2001). It is suggested that there is a gap in the research based around space design and most of the focus has been on building performance. The space design focus of Zimmerman et al.’s (2001) paper proposes that, if architects learn about how their building affects productivity, they can improve their future designs. It is proposed that the same could be said for architects learning how their buildings change over time.

Another prominent barrier for feedback to architects is the POE tools themselves, which tend to focus on business goals rather than design feedback. This is echoed by Gorgolewski (2005b) who states that "feedback is usually focused on business goals rather than design feedback" and reiterated by Roberts (2001). This is presumably because businesses are more interested in short term business goals; with many businesses specifically set up to report to shareholders on a frequent basis. Essentially, because design feedback does not help them with these reports, it becomes less important.

Another reason why architects have little interest in feedback mechanisms is that most of the time, they are selected for projects based on creative premises through competitions (Heylighen et al.

2007b). These competitions are generally won on the look of the design and the suitability of it in terms of the brief. Therefore, their past performance holds very little value to winning new business.

A further barrier to architects uptake of these feedback tools is that the current feedback methods appear to be about either building performance or user satisfaction (Kooymans & Haylock 2006), neither of which are ranked high in terms of architect’s values (see section 3.1). If a feedback mechanism was more in line with these values, and highlighted the importance of user satisfaction and building performance over time, it is possible that it might be more effective.

Bordass et al. (2001) suggests that architects do not want to get involved in feedback for fear of unveiling mistakes during the design. However, Bordass et al. (2001) also explain that Involvement in

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