From Linear Delivery Process to Life Cycle Phases: The Validity of the Concept of Building Performance Evaluation

The first precursors to post-occupancy evaluation (POE) started in the US with studies of dormitories in the late 1960s. Van der Ryn and Silverstein (1967) carried out case study evaluations of dormitories at the University of California, Berkley, while Hsia (1967) was doing the same at the University of Utah. At the time, they were not called post-occupancy evaluations, but they were attempts at assessing building performance from the building users’ point of view (Connell and Ostrander 1976a). Wolfgang Preiser, first editor and author, was inspired by Van der Ryn and Hsia and developed his Master’s thesis on evaluating dormitory performance at Virginia Tech (Preiser 1969). He used political science rating scales, with error rates of 3–5%, to create specific quality profiles of the three different housing types, as seen by the students.