Understanding the Needs and Challenges of Occupant-centric Building Design among Stakeholders: A Review

Designing high-performance buildings is a complex process that involves several stakeholders at different stages of design development. Design stakeholders need to work together to achieve design objectives and overcome the challenge that arises from inefficient collaboration and coordination. Among these challenges are occupant-related assumptions which are made throughout the design process, including schematic design, energy modelling, construction, and even operation. Accuracy of these assumptions is highly dependent on the design stakeholders' objectives and the time that they are engaged in the design process. Differences in occupant-related assumptions can lead to a considerable level of uncertainty, which probably leads to suboptimal design decisions. To this end, the current practice, including the challenges and the barriers, needs to be documented and understood in order to develop an improved occupant modelling approach during building design. Therefore, this paper highlights the current practices of communicating occupant-related assumptions in the building design process. In this paper, we also argue the need for in-depth consideration of communication among design stakeholders.