Abstract for:Project management operations and building performance in the construction industry: A multi method approach applied in a UK public office building

The “performance gap” in the UK building industry is a persistent problem as new building development projects underperform more often than not. Underperformance has to be addressed as the building sector is responsible for a large share of CO2 emissions in the UK. The “performance gap” arises in part, because building project development involves operations with several stages and actors of different motivations. The outcome of the building project in terms of quality is important and has implications for energy consumption, carbon emissions and occupant well-being.  We develop a system dynamics model of building project development operations to explore building quality implications for energy consumption and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). To do this, we couple the system dynamics model to a building physics model and apply them in an empirical case of a recently completed building project. The building performance model is developed and calibrated to reproduce the actual energy performance of the building based on one year of monitoring and post commission data. This is used as a reference point for the system dynamics model that explores additional scenarios of how project operations could deliver better total building performance.