Designing and Building with Rehabilitation in Mind

Rehabilitation is viewed as a series of modifications that enhance a building. In this sense, rehabilitation can occur at any point in the building's life, even during construction. These modifications will inevitably occur as total building performance is better understood and as the performance objectives for a building change over its useful life. Design and construction should, therefore, provide for this inevitable rehabilitation. However, it is rare that a client requests a study of total building performance before the building is built. The state of Florida has recently commissioned a diverse team to investigate its building delivery process. The study is focused upon Florida A & M University's new school of architecture, with less detailed examinations of five other new buildings of varied functions. The key features of our study include a number of tasks: first, tracking the construction process of the six buildings (analysis of program and design decisions, modeling of the state's building delivery process, assessing change orders); second, monitoring the move-in process and premove adaptations; third, carrying out postoccupancy evaluations of the six buildings. These will be comprehensive evaluations, looking at user response to the designed environment as well as technical performance in terms of energy, maintenance, and repairs. This paper describes in more detail the methods used for each task. The significance of the study lies in its comprehensive, integrative approach, where information from each task will be weighed in light of the concerns and findings from the other tasks. We will try to answer questions about the appropriateness of the programming, design, construction, and management processes used. Technical and functional performance also will be compared. Overall performance will be judged in the light of the multifaceted points of view of the various interested parties. It is hoped that, as a result of this study, rehabilitative modifications during initial construction will be reduced on future projects.