The Unrealized Opportunity of Our Crumbling Infrastructure

The Union of Concerned Scientists recently released a report on the dangers that climate change pose to our cultural resources. The report is summarized here - History Under Water: Climate Change Imperils Historic, Cultural Sites. 

As an aside, the article reports that our National Parks have $11 billion dollars of deferred maintenance needs now, without even accounting for the resilience measures necessary to address the impacts of climate change. Our schools have $271 billion dollars of deferred maintenance just to get them back up to minimum standards. To actually modernize our schools would require $542 billion (source). Our drinking water infrastructure – $1 trillion+ (source). Our bridges -  $20.5 billion annually spent through 2028 (source). And the list goes on and on relative to our national infrastructure. Plus there’s over $500 billion dollars of work out there to improve building energy efficiency, representing $130 billion dollars of savings annually in energy costs (source). A vast untapped reserve of jobs and economic boost is out there and energy efficiency itself represents a major wedge for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But we don’t seem to have the political will to do it. And in the meantime our infrastructure and cultural resources will continue to deteriorate, more rapidly with worsening climate change impacts, and with major ramifications to our safety, economy and national identity.

School Reception Desks & Intimidation: Seeing a School through Student Eyes

School can be an intimidating experience for students. The first days and weeks of a school year, whether we’re talking about the student’s first day of school ever, at the beginning of a new school year, or in a new school after moving, can be particularly intimidating and even scary events in the life of a student.

It’s important that a school’s design not contribute to this feeling of intimidation. It should, in fact, help mitigate such feelings and facilitate positive interactions with teachers/staff and other students, as well as help students feel welcome. An elementary school’s reception desk provides an example of this.

In an elementary school, the youngest and shortest students should still be able to see over the counter at the reception desk. The design of the reception desk in the image on the left doesn’t allow for this, and provides those students affected with an intimidating and less welcoming experience. For this particular school, it was also an annoyance for those manning the desk in that they have to motion the students to peak around the side or they have to stand up. And that annoyance may be inadvertently felt by the student as well, increasing the negative nature of the interaction.

But at the school in the image on the right, the reception desk has a center section low enough for students, even the youngest and shortest students, to see over and engage the adult on the other side face to face. It encourages the human connection between receptionist and student as opposed to hindering it, and as such, represents the better practice.

As a side note, part of the reason we conduct post occupancy evaluations is to give the occupant a voice and allow us to see the facility through their eyes. As I conducted the analysis after visiting both of these schools, I realized I could have done a better job at showing the school through the eyes of the younger students. None of the photographs were taken from their perspective. Imagine how much more powerful the contrasting images would have been had they been taken from a kindergartner’s eye level perspective.

How a Lack of Space/Flexibility Can Impact Teacher Productivity/Performance

Spatial restrictions and a lack of flexibility can have significant impacts on productivity/performance, as was found during the fieldwork conducted for a Kansas school district’s master planning effort. Spatial restrictions in general, and the lack of space for support staff and the combined “gymacafetoriums” (gyms, cafeteria and auditorium) of several of the older elementary schools in particular, had resulted in a “culture” or “specialization” in scheduling that varied in scale from yearly/semester scheduling tasks to daily scheduling tasks. A large degree of effort was put into scheduling the multiple uses of individual spaces (down to the minute), and a lot of time was spent traversing from one end to the other of these schools, or out to the portables. As a result, a significant amount of time was diverted from the educational mission of the schools, limiting flexibility and constraining individual teaching and administrator styles.

One principal stated that on the day before his interview was conducted, he and his staff had spent two hours talking logistics. He estimated that on average 15 to 20 minutes per day were spent dealing with scheduling issues and other related matters tied to space restrictions. At another school, the gifted teacher (who at the time occupied a former closet space), lamented that on the morning of her school’s interviews she found a special education meeting occurring in her office when she came in. As a result she had to find a space elsewhere to operate from, but that space ended up being taken over as well. The end result was that “education hadn’t happened in her room that day …”

At a third school, one staff member commented: “There are not enough staff restrooms and they are too far from the gym.  I only have a couple of minutes usually to walk halfway down the length of the building to get to a staff restroom and since there are only 2 toilets in that location they can be occupied when I need to quickly use the restroom and get to my next class. It creates a lot of anxiety!  I hate to make my classes/teachers wait for me.”

In the end, after implementing surveys and conducting in-context interviews and observation, and analyzing the data gathered, we conservatively estimated that addressing the elementary school space restrictions and lack of flexibility issues would have the following benefits:

• Eliminate 18,400 – 22,400 person-hours per school-year of wasted teacher/staff time spent scheduling and coordinating use of space. 
• Equates to approximately 2.16% - 2.63% of the total labor hours annually “spent” by the elementary school teachers/staff. 
• Translates to approximately $722,970 – $883,630 worth of teacher/staff time each year.

Another way to put this is that at least $722,970 – $883,630 was annually being spent for tasks/efforts not directly related to education, but required by the limitations of some of the district’s facilities. And these limitations weren’t present in all of the schools, creating a source of inequity among the district’s elementary schools. This became one of the many items addressed in the master plan, as well as one of the many reasons presented to the community for supporting the associated bond.

Don't Forget the People

Our built environment isn’t just about the building or the physical; it’s also about the people. It’s about understanding occupant daily activities and interactions, about understanding how this impacts building performance and vice versa, and how we account for this during master planning, design and post occupancy to align needs with the built environment. Because a facility’s contextual ability to meet our needs in turn shapes, enables, encourages, restricts and constrains all sorts of individual behavior. And this has a variety of quantitative and qualitative impacts on the individual as well as on the larger organization of which they are a part of (and to society in general).

So, don't forget the people.

To Be Green or Not To Be Green, That is the Question: Assessing & Encouraging Prosocial (Green) Decision Making in the Building/Construction Industry

Cognitive psychologists generally divide our decision making systems, with respect to risk, into analytical vs. emotional reactions. The former carefully considers costs versus benefits, while the latter interprets risks emotionally; as a “primitive and urgent reaction to danger” intended to rapidly size up a given situation and remove us from that danger. Neither system is particularly suited for rationally considering long-term benefits thanks to our evolutionary past as hunter/gatherers.

As a result our analytical analyses and emotional responses tend to over emphasize those events, threats, etc., that have immediate impact in our daily lives – i.e., job loss, daily deadlines, etc. vs. rising sea levels or green house gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, these studies have demonstrated that the degree of our reactions, responses, urgencies, and calls to action end up being relative to our perception of the impact on ourselves and those we call our own.

However, this picture begins to change when decision making shifts from the individual and very small group level to larger groups, as demonstrated by researchers affiliated with the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED). If cooperation and group unity is achieved, decision making is often made with respect to the common good.  Delayed, long-term benefits are given more weight by groups (households, companies, community boards, etc.) than by individuals.

Uniformity among group members, high levels of cooperation, and functional integration become the hallmarks of successful groups (see Evolution: This View of Life and The Evolution Institute for more information on this). Selfish behaviors tend to be locally advantageous and more relevant in the short term, while pro-social behaviors tend to be globally advantageous and more relevant in the long term. Prosocial behaviors also tend to enhance cooperation among group members.  And our social/cultural norms act as a kind of “glue”, binding together unrelated individuals within larger groups and providing a measure of uniformity in their behavior.

Relative to the building construction industry, it would seem that short term, local, benefits often outweigh long-term benefits when making decisions on how green to be. Following the above line of reasoning, this suggests that in those cases where short term, local benefits have won out, individuals or small groups whose common good did not necessarily coincide with green’s delayed benefits were the primary decision makers involved. And it would also suggest that these decision makers had less influence from other people within their own organization, as well as outside their organization.

So in 2009 I conducted a pilot study to test the following hypothesis: The more people who have a say in the decisions involved in a construction project (particularly earlier in the design process), the more likely it will be designed and built sustainably (LEED or otherwise), all else being equal. You can see a pdf of the paper and slides I presented at the 2009 Behavior Energy and Climate Change (BECC) conference here: The Decision to Go Green: Individual vs. Group Influences on Our Likelihood to Build Sustainably.

To test this, I compared a data set of certified, non-certified but green, and conventionally designed facilities with respect to the decision makers – the number of decision makers involved, who they were, their demographic make-up, their core values, and the degree of outside influence that impacted their decisions. Specifically I ran a Kendall’s Tau-B correlation test looking at the degree of correlation between the number of people involved in the decision process (directly and indirectly) and both a) the number of sustainable elements incorporated and b) the level of certification sought.

The reader is referred to the slides and paper for a more thorough discussion, but though preliminary, the results did support the hypothesis that the more people who have a say in the decisions involved in a construction project, the more likely it will be designed and built sustainably, all else being equal. This would suggest that by somehow creating an environment where building owners actively reach out to their employees, as well as their clients, tenants, surrounding neighbors, etc., and directly solicit their opinions regarding any new construction or existing renovations, it will increase the likelihood that these projects will be sustainable and certified. Future research will expand the database of projects examined and better control for local/regional variation.

Comfort Vs. "Cool": Thermal Comfort & Clothing Variability in Schools

Thermal comfort in schools is impacted by a variety of factors, and this was discussed somewhat in a previous post: Culture and Thermal Comfort. But beyond HVAC system problems as well as the differences in perceived temperature control, activity levels and physiology between students and adults (and between men and women), the variation between student and adult thermal comfort ratings are partially due to the typically greater variability in student clothing compared to adult clothing (particularly during the warmer months and for high school students). One’s perspective of acceptable clothing is shaped by peers and family, school policy, and society in general. Clothing is also used as a means of establishing “group” identity as well as signaling membership in that “group.” For teenagers who are still maturing and experimenting with who they eventually want to be and what “groups” they want to belong to, clothing is part of that experimentation, both in terms of clothing type and the amount worn (Harmon 2012).

Because the varying insulative properties of clothing also affect thermal comfort, when a large segment of the facility population has a wide range of clothing styles subject to frequent changes, it becomes more difficult to maximize thermal comfort. One potential means of addressing this beyond the building itself, is to encourage everyone to keep layers of clothing available. The goal is an occupant population that will add or reduce layers of clothing as individually needed and more uniformly respond to exterior weather conditions in terms of percentage of exposed skin, but still allow expression through clothing choices and styles (Harmon 2012).

This is a reasonable response to widely varying clothing styles because we know that occupants in general are more likely to adjust their clothing in response to changing thermal conditions as opposed to keeping them constant (Schiavon and Lee 2013). However, in K-12 environments this is complicated by socio-economic status (perhaps more so than in other environments) because low SES students may not have the financial resources to obtain multiple layers of clothing. In addition, energy models commonly assume a clothing insulation value of 0.5 clo for the cooling season and 1.0 clo for the heating season, with an abrupt change from one to the other as the seasons transition. But we know that clothing is not constant (and can be highly variable among the building population). Studies (Lee et al. 2013; Lee and Schiavon 2013; and Schiavon and Lee 2012, 2013) have shown that energy models making use of more dynamic models of clothing insulation result in improved thermal comfort, smaller HVAC equipment sizes and lower energy consumption.

References

Harmon, M. (2012) Creating Environments that Promote Efficiency and Sustainability: Anthropological Applications in the Building/Construction Industry. Proceedings from the 2012 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, pp 7-75 - 7-87, http://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2012/start.htm. 

Lee, J., H. Zhang and E. Arens (2013) Typical Clothing Ensemble Insulation Levels for Sixteen Body Parts. Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), Center for the Built Environment, Center for Environmental Design Research, UC Berkeley, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/18f0r375.

Lee, K. H. and S. Schiavon (2013) Influence of Two Dynamic Predictive Clothing Insulation Models on Building Energy Performance. Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), Center for the Built Environment, Center for Environmental Design Research, UC Berkeley, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8sx4w8mn.

Schiavon, S. and K. H. Lee (2012) Dynamic Predictive Clothing Insulation Models Based on Outdoor Air and Indoor Operative Temperatures. Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ), Center for the Built Environment, Center for Environmental, Design Research, UC Berkeley, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3338m9qf. 

Schiavon, S. and K. H. Lee (2013) Influence Of Three Dynamic Predictive Clothing Insulation Models On Building Energy Use, HVAC Sizing And Thermal Comfort. HVAC Systems, Center for the Built Environment, Center for Environmental Design Research, UC Berkeley http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3sx6n876.

Windows With Unintended Views - The Need to Engage Key Stakeholders Using Multiple Methods

Not only do designers need to engage as many different stakeholder groups as possible to give them a voice, but they need to do it using multiple methods – interviews, observations and surveys (after occupancy as well as before). This typically results in insights that wouldn’t have been gained from using only one or two methods, including insights into unintended consequences. And one-on-one interviews in context often jog memories about issues as well as provide opportunities for occupants to share thoughts they might not in a group.

In this New Mexico elementary school, teachers had mixed feelings regarding the small, low windows in the classrooms, and its likely that many of the following concerns were weighed during the planning/design process. Some found the windows distracting to class activities, while others felt that a view to the outside was important for students. One teacher felt that the outside view of playground activities and the valley below important as the views provided a number of learning opportunities. Others liked the light from the smaller windows, and the fact that blinds allowed the teachers to control the views.  Several teachers commented that the vertical blinds didn't work well.

However, it is likely that the following unintended consequence wasn’t addressed during the planning/design phases, and the only way to learn about it was by engaging the teachers in a post occupancy evaluation or ethnographic exercise of some type. While out on the playground, one teacher related that the size and placement of the windows was unfortunate, as they framed adult bodies in an unflattering way that generated rude comments from older students inside the classrooms.  As a result, staff, particularly female staff, felt that they had to be particularly aware of body placement in their classrooms as well when they were outside near the building. This distracted from the learning process in a number of ways (including providing an avenue for the expression of disrespectful behavior among some students), and it was suggested that slightly larger windows would have solved the problem.