# INTRODUCTION

![](media/image1.jpeg){width="2.7604166666666665in"
height="2.0in"}Commercial buildings are those designed, built, and
operated for any use other than residential, manufacturing, or
agriculture, including everything from schools to hospitals, offices to
grocery stores. These buildings can be dedicated to a single,
homogeneous use such as a corporate headquarters, or they can be a
complex combination of rooms for public interaction, space for
commercial activity, classrooms, workspaces, cooking and dining
facilities, and even living quarters, such as those found in dormitories
(taken from the V01 draft of the Technology Roadmap for High-Performance
Commercial Buildings, June 2000).

![](media/image2.png){width="6.0in" height="0.7604166666666666in"}The
U.S. Department of Energy\'s Office of Building Technology, State and
Community (BTS) Programs is facilitating an industry-led initiative to
develop a series of technology roadmaps. The roadmaps identify key goals
and strategies for different areas of the building and equipment
industry. The High-Performance Commercial Buildings technology roadmap
(Roadmap, CBI 2000) identifies a plan for integrating research,
development, and deployment on improved systems, processes, and
operation of commercial buildings in the future in the United States to
improve the performance of these buildings.

![](media/image3.jpeg){width="2.6979166666666665in" height="2.03125in"}A
major issue that has arisen in the quest to help improve the
performance, including energy and environmental performance, of
commercial buildings, is to actually define what constitutes high
performance. There are certainly many other issues related to improving
buildings in the future, but this issue of being able to define what a
high performance building is, as well as rate its performance and
benefits for being a high performer, is the central topic discussed
here.

Since commercial buildings are so diverse, some diversity in the
configuration of methods used to rate different types of buildings may
be required. A church will not be rated as an office would, and a church
may not even have owners who wish to be rated at all. For those who wish
to celebrate diversity, commercial buildings provide ample opportunity.

![](media/image4.png){width="2.6979166666666665in"
height="2.625in"}Regardless of what transpires as to the benefits of
particular approaches or technologies for commercial buildings in the
future, the ability to define and measure building performance has
potentially important long-lasting benefits related to valuation of
buildings, understanding how to improve buildings, and achieving
specific performance goals that may be formulated by private companies,
public organizations, or governments. This ability is also crucial to
the activities envisioned in the Roadmap.

The potential benefits of an improved ability to rate commercial
building performance must be considered within the current context of
many existing awards, benchmarking methods, and performance measurement
practices. Given the wide range of existing methods that rate
performance relative to or give awards for certain aspects of commercial
building ownership or operation, acknowledgement and some linkage to
these existing methods and award procedures must occur, at least to a
limited degree. The pursuit of a method to measure overall performance
of commercial buildings, with flexibility to adapt where needed, should
be viewed as growing from existing methods and helping to bring a more
comprehensive picture of building performance to light.

This paper presents a high-level view of issues related to development
of methods for defining and rating commercial building performance. A
proposed strawman is thrown out for discussion at a high categorical
level, with suggested category weightings.

# DEVELOPMENT ISSUES

![](media/image5.png){width="2.375in"
height="2.2416666666666667in"}Attempts to develop a definition of what a
high performance building is, without also developing the metrics and
approaches for assigning a performance rating, will probably lead to
quite protracted development efforts that eventually may disintegrate.
Both the definition or definition process and the metrics or performance
rating process must be developed in tandem to keep a grip on reality,
since it is quite easy to postulate definitions that would be very
unworkable in practice and also quite easy to develop rating methods
that are out of line with definitional requirements. Also, the process
of developing the actual metrics and approach for obtaining a rating
usually leads to insights into how performance should be defined. If the
definition and metrics approach are not handled in tandem, serious
problems with eventual use are likely to develop.

Since commercial buildings are so diverse, serving many different types
of occupancies or functions and with many different types of owner and
owner objectives desired, any attempt to develop a single system to
define and rate performance of these buildings will not be perfect and
will even be unsatisfactory for many potential users. One strategy for
dealing with the issues created by the diversity is to at least define a
flexible system that can have many possible configurations.

Another option for handling diversity is to have a cascading system,
which might evaluate performance at a high level for all buildings using
one method or set of criteria, and use more tailored, specific methods
or criteria to evaluate specific building types or uses. In this way,
schools, offices, groceries, and other diverse building types could be
evaluated relative to their function using tailored
criteria![](media/image6.png){width="1.25in"
height="2.6041666666666665in"} appropriate to the use.

The ability for a commercial building performance rating system to be
flexible is probably crucial for providing initial insight by a wide
audience into the possibilities for such a system. However, flexibility
also leads to potential chaos relative to understanding and interpreting
results, so initial flexibility must eventually give way to fixed
settings and approaches for meaningful performance comparisons to be
made among buildings in any specific, set context.

Many more issues along these lines could be raised, but the intent here
is to illustrate the highly probable need for flexibility, as well as
the need to, eventually, reasonably fix the parameters and approach of
any such rating system for use in specific contexts, possibly at
different levels of detail.

Although some subjectivity is likely necessary for some contexts where
an interest in rating performance exists, in general the methods should
be as empirical as possible, and where subjective judgment is necessary,
it should be limited by definition of specific categories that must be
selected. Lacking sufficient empiricism, acceptance will falter.

Major issues related to who will be the users of such a rating system,
how any rating results will impact actions of building owners,
operators, and other building industry actors, how such abilities will
be deployed and maintained, and how quality will be assured also exist.
These and other wide-ranging issues must be considered during
development of performance definition and rating methods, although
abilities to adequately address them all will likely be limited. Given
the extent of such issues and the need to eventually address many if not
most of them acceptably argues for quick development of prototype
definition and rating procedures that can be tested by user groups. The
testing process itself should be used to help identify the order and
priority of addressing these wide-ranging issues, and the resolution of
the testing process should be expected to include the best possible
resolution of the most important subset of such issues that arise. A
100% solution to rating commercial building performance is probably not
possible, so expectations should be managed to gear potential users to
acceptance of 75 to 90% solutions, possibly in a series of developments
to increase quality of the methods from nominal 80% levels to nominal
90% levels over time.

# CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES

![](media/image7.jpeg){width="2.2597222222222224in"
height="1.7013888888888888in"}Rating the performance of buildings
differs from rating a design or initial functioning of a building, and
the meaning of performance discussed here relates to performance over
time, which implies that a certain minimum time of use of a building is
required before any performance can be evaluated. This does not mean
that some means of rating building designs or expected performance based
on initial testing should not be considered, but the difference between
rating actual performance in use vs rating of designs and expected
performance must be clearly recognized.

![](media/image8.png){width="1.6625in" height="1.636111111111111in"}This
boundary has special significance relative to "Sustainable Design" and
other such topics considered to offer sustainability. Sustainability is
often treated in a way that negates possibilities for making existing
buildings "sustainable," even though the greatest impact to
sustainability goals for the buildings sectors of national economies is
likely to come from existing buildings. This paradox will also be seen
in the following section on Building Performance Rating System
Frameworks used to rate environmental performance.

Sustainability is often considered in the context of contributions to
global needs or as addressing issues of importance to the whole world.
There are many ranges of domains that can be considered relative to
buildings and building performance, from location to political /
economic to business. These domain ranges can act to define specific
contexts or as filters to consider only certain aspects of a complicated
set of issues. As an example, discussions of building performance often
include mention of issues related to the site a building occupies and
performance criteria for the site. Issues related to how a building and
its site affect the community where they reside are also often a topic.
Interrelationships exist between domain levels for a range such as
location. These interrelationships cannot be ignored, but they can be
segregated, even if only partially, in order to improve the ease of
understanding of issues at only one level of a domain.

![](media/image9.png){width="2.8020833333333335in"
height="2.0729166666666665in"}Consider the range of location domains
shown here from the building level up to the entire world level. Each
additional level raises the complexity of issues and interactions
significantly. Although one may wish to consider issues at the national
or international level, the major tradeoff involves looking at a large
location domain with less ability to handle detail vs a smaller location
domain with increased ability to handle detail.

Decisions about buildings are often tied into the site the building
occupies, and actors in the buildings industry are comfortable dealing
with the mix of issues and considerations that arise with both the
building and site domains treated together. Many community issues are
also considered and dealt with relative to buildings and their use.
Although the three domains are often considered together in practical
use situations, the level of interactive consideration is often limited
to a specific set of issues pertinent to the specific situation, and
these issues often change from case to case. The reader is asked to
recognize here that the inclusion of each successive domain level in
combination with another level increases the complexity of potential
issues and interactions by a significant degree, possibly an order of
magnitude or more for each.

![](media/image10.png){width="2.75in" height="3.1458333333333335in"}If
we recognize that it is often desirable and useful to integrate
consideration of the location domains of building and site, and also
that inclusion of successively larger domains reduces our ability to
handle all the details, then a strategy that allows both some level of
integration and separation may be useful. A staged process of
evaluation, segregating location domains during initial evaluation, and
integrating evaluation results to obtain an overall rating for building
and site later, may be very helpful to consider.

This approach of staging segregation to integration addresses some
important concerns for anyone wishing to develop some type of
performance definition and/or measurement system for commercial
buildings. One is that raising the level of complexity at any given
location domain makes a very difficult job much more difficult, and the
second is that it is easier to be confused about which domain you are in
if the building domain is retained in the larger domain of the site
and/or the community during evaluation of building performance.

Although there is a risk of less than optimal integration with such an
approach, staged segregation-integration of such issues should greatly
benefit both the progress and ease of developing the definition and
measurement methods for building performance, and may also significantly
enhance the approach to evaluating performance relative to the site and
community domains, as only the most important site and community issues
have to be included initially, but there is flexibility to later add
other issues as needed.

Similar perusal of the economic / political or business spheres would
lead to other possible ranges of domains that could be considered for
buildings and building performance, but in the interest of limiting
discussion now that the basic point has been made, these other spheres
will not be examined in any significant manner here.

The ability to define and measure building performance is a stepping
stone to many other important goals, including performance improvement
and recognition of good performance. Like all good stepping stones, care
must be taken to keep it in its place so it can serve its purpose. The
desire to move on to accomplishing other important goals may cause
confusion in the development of an ability to simply define and measure
performance. The most difficulty is typically caused by the desire to be
able to also diagnose causes of high or low performance. The process of
developing building performance definition and metrics approaches should
be guided by the need to put reasonable limits on what metrics are
expected to accomplish, in order to keep this important ability distinct
and able to serve its purpose and also to not retard its development.

# BUILDING PERFORMANCE RATING SYSTEM FRAMEWORK EXAMPLES

Some important activity on rating the measured energy performance of
existing buildings has occurred over the last few years, as witnessed by
the work on energy benchmarking (Sharp 1996; 1998) and the advent of the
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Energy Star Label for office
buildings and schools (see their website at
[[http://www.epa.gov/buildings/label/]{.underline}](http://www.epa.gov/buildings/label/)).
This author has developed a rating tool that can be used to rate the
energy performance of any commercial building, with some cautions. The
tool remains unpublished at present, but is available for constructive
comment upon request and also available for specific application on a
very limited basis.

![](media/image11.png){width="2.1979166666666665in"
height="1.2916666666666667in"}In Europe, efforts have also started to do
some types of emissions benchmarking and implement voluntary agreements
between governments and large corporations or industry groups to reduce
air emissions (often by increasing energy efficiency, see for example,
OECD 1997). The term "voluntary agreement" or "voluntary approach" has
been used to describe a wide range of actions, including covenants,
negotiated agreements, self regulation, codes of conduct, and
eco-contracts.

Concerning the issue of rating the energy performance of an existing
building, the EPA E[nergy]{.smallcaps} S[tar]{.smallcaps}^®^ website
states:

> \[The\] Benchmarking Tool is an online tool that evaluates building
> energy performance on a 0 to 100 scale using detailed data on your
> building\'s physical attributes, operating characteristics, and
> monthly energy consumption.
>
> Buildings that score a 75 or higher and maintain a healthy and
> productive indoor air environment, consistent with industry standards,
> are eligible to receive the ENERGY STAR Label for Buildings.

Energy performance rating systems focus on one part of building
performance: energy. Rating systems have also been developed over the
last decade that rate environmental performance of buildings. These
environmental rating systems also typically include some type of energy
component, as energy efficiency is often considered part of
environmental performance.

The LEED Green Building Rating System (USGBC 2000), currently at version
2.0, is promulgated by the U. S. Green Building Council (see their
website at
[[http://www.usgbc.org/]{.underline}](http://www.epa.gov/buildings/label/)).
LEED is targeted at improving the environmental and economic performance
of commercial buildings by means of green and sustainable design.

![](media/image12.png){width="1.2395833333333333in"
height="1.2395833333333333in"}In contrast to ENERGY STAR, which
evaluates energy use in an existing building and sets required
acceptable criteria for system and environmental performance, LEED
primarily evaluates the proposed design of buildings using subcategories
under major categories to achieve a score for each subcategory. Based on
the total points scored, in ascending order of good accomplishment, a
building may have achieved (plain vanilla) LEED certification, or
Silver, Gold, or Platinum levels.

The major categories for LEED scoring are Sustainable Sites, Water
Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor
Environmental Quality, and an add-on category (extra credit) for
Innovation and Design Process. Details become somewhat involved, but
these categories provide the conceptual framework for rating building
designs (and presumably performance will follow), and this framework is
the most important to consider relative to the topic at hand.

Achieving LEED certification becomes more difficult for an existing
building, as many of the scoring points can typically only be addressed
easily (or at all) when a building is to be built (which is in line with
the goal of promoting green and sustainable design). LEED also mixes
site and building issues, which is one of the important conceptual
boundaries discussed above.

Another system for assessing the energy and environmental performance of
commercial buildings is BREEAM (BRE Environmental Assessment Method).
BREEAM was originally developed in the United Kingdom by BRE, the
Building Research Establishment, with partners in commercial real estate
and the building industry. BREEAM is claimed to be the most widely used
international method for assessing building quality and performance in
terms of energy, environmental impact, and health indicators (try
checking the website at <http://products.bre.co.uk/breeam/default.html>
and also the website at <http://www.breeamcanada.ca/>). BREEAM uses much
broader assessment categories than LEED, which cover building envelope
and other systems, as well as operation and maintenance. The two
assessment stages, before and after, allow level of improvement to be
quantified.

![](media/image13.jpeg){width="4.166666666666667in"
height="0.6979166666666666in"}

BREEAM has apparently been applied to over a thousand buildings in
Europe, Asia, and

America. The approach used involves comparing the current conditions and
practices with recognized and peer-reviewed "best practices" and
conditions. A description of the BREEAM Canada method is probably most
accessible to American readers (Skopek 1999). The BREEAM assessment
procedure has three sets of issues in two parts: Building Envelope and
Systems, and Operation and Management. The issues for both parts have
the same major categories: Global Issues, Local Issues, and Indoor
Issues.

![](media/image14.png){width="2.6104166666666666in" height="2.0in"}The
global issues include ozone impacts, carbon dioxide impacts, and
recycling. Local issues include water conservation, transportation, and
noise. Each issue has a certain number of points that can be earned for
good performance. This method is well suited to use for existing
buildings, and the before and after approach provides a baseline
assessment as well as potential targets for improvement. The level of
improvement is rated implicitly in the procedure as a result of the
before and after approach. BREEAM recognizes the importance of location
domains, with issues divided into Global, Local, and Indoor (Building)
domains.

An example of a rating system that goes beyond energy and environment,
from the International Energy Agency's (IEA) work on Integral Building
Envelope Performance Assessment, Annex 32 of the Buildings and Community
Systems program, uses several categories to assess building performance.
Weights for each category are explored based on expert opinion of Annex
32 panel members and from a special experts group assembled in the
Netherlands in October 1999.

![](media/image15.jpeg){width="5.99375in" height="0.8506944444444444in"}

The performance rating categories and their weights are shown in the
table below. These categories come from a group having a special
interest in energy. The categories are a good illustration of how
boundaries between the building, site, and community can become hard to
distinguish. Eco system impact could refer to a local ecosystem or to
larger ecosystems, and these impacts extend beyond the location of the
building itself. The other categories can, primarily, be considered
specific to a building itself, although the weights from the Klankbord
(experts group) on global warming potential appear to recognize a
dependent relationship of this category to other categories.

***Weights for a potential system to rate commercial building
performance.***

+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| IEA Annex 32 aspect             | Weighting from  | Weighting from  |
|                                 |                 |                 |
|                                 | Annex 32        | 'Klankbord'     |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Building energy used            | 25              | 30              |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Comfort and productivity        | 14              | 15              |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Durability, maintenance,        | 16              | 20              |
| flexibility                     |                 |                 |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Eco system impact               | 11              | 13              |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Embodied energy                 | 4               | 2               |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Global warming potential        | 6               |                 |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Image and aesthetics            | 9               | 10              |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Indoor air quality              | 9               | 5               |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
| Re-use, recyclability           | 6               | 5               |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+
|                                 | 100             | 100             |
+---------------------------------+-----------------+-----------------+

Some adaptation of any of the procedures discussed in this section is
necessary for use in a consistent building performance rating system, as
approaches, scope, and procedures differ. With these frameworks as
examples, a building performance framework strawman approach can be
proposed for consideration.

# BUILDING PERFORMANCE DEFINITION AND MEASUREMENT STRAWMAN

To facilitate conceptualization and discussion of an eventual approach
and methods to define and measure commercial building performance, a
strawman framework is suggested here. As with the examples of rating
system frameworks presented above, the use of categories is recommended
to accommodate both a range of interests and also the range of
performance criteria expected to be needed. In line with the idea of
keeping flexibility in the initial method, the categories have weights
that can be adjusted according to user preferences, although for use in
support of efforts such as envisioned for the Roadmap, specific weights
are likely to be fixed based on industry recommendations for specific
contexts.

![](media/image16.jpeg){width="2.1041666666666665in"
height="1.675in"}Only the top-level categories are presented here for
the strawman, under the premise that a top-down approach will be the
most useful for gaining agreement on a final method. A fixed set of
weights for categories is also suggested. The weights can be adapted for
other uses, but in the interest of promoting discussion for the Roadmap,
weights are suggested as starting points of discussion for eventual use
to support Roadmap goals for commercial buildings likely to be initial
targets. These targets, or target occupancies, have NOT been selected,
so an unfortunate vagueness will be present in the discussion following,
but likely candidates may include office buildings, malls, lodging
facilities, large or major chain retail, professional buildings, higher
education, K-12 schools, hospitals and other medical facilities, food
sales facilities, courthouses, museums, and warehouses. Restaurants may
also be an important target, although they present some major challenges
for rating (there are several categories of restaurant operation, and
differences in operations between these types, e.g., fast food to
limited seating to formal dining, are extensive).

The four suggested major categories for defining and measuring
commercial building performance of the expected contexts having initial
priority for the commercial Roadmap, together with suggested weightings,
are:

-   Economic performance, 25%

-   Functionality, 30%

-   Energy efficiency / environmental performance, 20%

-   Occupant satisfaction, 25%

> TOTAL = 100%

![](media/image17.png){width="4.5in" height="3.7555555555555555in"}Each
category would have its own individual rating procedure or set of
procedures to arrive at a total score for the category. A diagram is
provided to indicate one possible method for arranging the categorical
procedures and arriving at a combined rating. With a weighting approach,
the score of each category is multiplied by its weight, and the weighted
score of each is added to arrive at the total score for a building.

Although much has been written, spoken, and proposed regarding the holy
grail of measuring occupant productivity, and although the ability to
measure occupant productivity has many important benefits, this proposed
framework does NOT address productivity directly. The reasons are many,
but simply put, including productivity might delay development of a
system for measuring building performance for decades, and for many
types of buildings, productivity measurement is not an acceptable
measure of building performance. The bottom line is that efforts to
develop methods to measure office worker productivity should probably
continue, but for more general commercial building contexts, it is not
an acceptable performance indicator. In addition, productivity is a
subset of economic performance and partially a reaction to occupant
satisfaction.

The proposed strawman does NOT address site or community issues
acceptably, and additional work is needed to develop strawman concepts
for those location domains. Some means of integrating results from
building, site, and community evaluations is also needed. This paper
does not deal with this important additional effort, and readers are
asked to remember the limits to what is presented here. The focus here
has been narrowed to the building location only, which is fairly
complicated of itself.

Some discussion of possibilities for each of the building rating
categories follows. Under previous work sponsored by BTS, probably the
most work has been conducted on empirical ranking procedures for energy
efficiency performance, since that is a central area of work for BTS.
Thus, most of the work of developing an empirical energy efficiency
performance rating method has already been conducted, and an empirical
performance ranking procedure is probably most appropriate.

![](media/image18.jpeg){width="2.5972222222222223in"
height="1.9479166666666667in"}The significant development of procedures
for ranking environmental performance, as discussed very briefly above,
also offers rich material for developing a rating procedure that covers
environmental performance. The energy portion of such procedures should
be removed as notably inferior to the empirical energy efficiency
performance ranking procedures already developed; and the issues related
to the proposed staged segregation -- integration approach to location
domains will have to be addressed and acceptable methods defined. Much
material already exists for this part of the proposed strawman, so
development could start at a fairly advanced stage.

Many measures of economic performance of buildings already exist and are
used as standard practice. Many empirical indicators of economic
performance from an owner's or investor's perspective are tracked and
reported at many geographic levels from national to local. The
perspective from which to evaluate economic performance must be
selected, as most existing indicators address the perspective of
building owner or investor. A more global perspective would be possible,
where not only owner or investor economic performance parameters would
be considered, but also parameters indicating economic activity of the
occupants could be included. Some significant research is probably
needed to identify current approaches for different major building
occupancies and to determine if a reasonably common approach can be
developed that indicates overall building economic performance and
addresses the major target occupancies. An empirical ranking method
appears most appropriate.

![](media/image19.png){width="4.144444444444445in"
height="2.1347222222222224in"}

Some uncertainty exists over how economic performance of government
buildings in the target occupancies can be measured, but there are money
flows associated with government buildings, so some type of economic
performance measurement seems at least possible. This raises the issue
of whether a unified method of measuring economic performance can be
developed that can accommodate both private and public sector
occupancies.

![](media/image20.jpeg){width="3.8229166666666665in"
height="1.53125in"}Significant resources currently exist for determining
satisfaction of building occupants. National awards are given for
excellence in serving building occupants' needs (e.g., CEL & Associates
National Real Estate "A List" Awards For Service Excellence). Once
target occupancies are selected, some work will be required to determine
whether existing resources for determining occupant satisfaction will
meet the needs of any proposed rating system and also whether current
proprietary methods might be prized loose for possible adaptation to
more publicly available approaches and wider application to building
performance rating.

Rating building functionality is fairly complicated and probably the
largest challenge in the strawman framework. Assessment of functionality
seeks to determine the quality of the performance interface between the
purpose of a building and its features. What range of features should be
considered? The need to address both the purpose a building serves and
how well building features meet the needs for that purpose makes
functionality quite difficult to treat if a wide variety of building
purposes are considered.

![](media/image21.jpeg){width="2.1951388888888888in"
height="1.6493055555555556in"}

Significant work by American and European experts on rating
functionality has been documented partially in an International Energy
Agency final report for Buildings and Community Systems Annex 32 Task A
on Integral Building Envelope Performance Assessment. The report was
released in late September 2000 (IEA 2000).

The rating system described in the IEA report is laid out to consider
the following major areas when rating functionality: Functional
Requirements, Image Expected, Internal Constraints, and External
Constraints. Under Functional Requirements, major categories are: Use,
Conditions, and Security / Safety. As further example, the main
sub-categories under Use are: Space Requirements, Space Relationships,
Logistics, Communications, Suitability / Workability, and Adaptability /
Flexibility. The development work conducted for Annex 32 is valuable
relative to rating functionality of a building, and the material
available is an important resource for anyone trying to develop a method
for rating building functionality. Since the purpose and image expected
of the building from the owner or occupant probably will have to be
considered, rating functionality will then involve several parties whose
views must be coalesced.

The highest level categories of a strawman method for rating commercial
building performance have been presented, together with limited
high-level discussion of resources available and issues related to these
categories. Consideration of other possibilities, discussion of this
strawman and alternatives, and consensus building on an eventual
approach can now begin with at least some small level of boundary,
issue, approach, and method definition presented.

# CONCLUSION

The BTS High-Performance Commercial Whole Buildings Roadmap has four
major strategies, the first of which is termed Performance Metrics. The
ability to define and rate the performance of commercial buildings has
been identified as critical to the ability of the Roadmap effort to
achieve High-Performance commercial buildings. Apart from the interests
of the Roadmap, a serious look at methods to rate overall performance of
commercial buildings appears highly worthwhile, although in most efforts
such as this there are many critics who will suggest that everything we
need to know is already known. Despite the likely criticism, this
author's opinion is that important benefits will accrue to all actors in
commercial buildings by bringing a more comprehensive view of commercial
building performance to light.

![](media/image22.png){width="2.1819444444444445in"
height="1.4548611111111112in"}Despite the recommendation to proceed with
development of methods to define and measure overall commercial building
performance, serious attention must be paid to existing performance
rating methods and awards given based on those ratings. Strengths and
weaknesses of existing methods must be understood, and strengths should
be leveraged as much as possible.

Discussions of how to develop performance metrics for commercial
buildings often dissolve into wide-ranging excursions on topics like
sustainability, standards, recycling, solar energy, and other (somewhat
generic) buzzword topics, which often induce a "buzz" but do not make
progress on the performance metrics development task. Off-the-cuff
efforts to develop performance metrics criteria often devolve into
minutiae of building performance from a building physics or other
viewpoint. The material presented here is intended to focus discussion
on performance metrics into a reasonable enough framework that a good
starting point is not far off and acceptable progress might be made
toward an initial schema for defining and rating commercial building
performance.

Strong consideration should be given to developing an approximately 80%
solution for rating commercial building performance in the near term, so
that testing of the methods may be conducted and recommendations for
refinement or alteration developed.

![](media/image23.png){width="2.9347222222222222in"
height="2.5972222222222223in"}Development teams for each major category
of the rating schema will likely be needed for initial development work,
and some members of each team should be part of an integration team that
assures the eventual integration of the categories into one method.

The performance metrics rating methods will likely become a national
standards activity at some time, but the initial work should NOT be
approached in a national or international standards framework, in order
to assure interim results that can be used for testing, as too much is
new at this point. Once methods appear reasonably workable, pursuit of
standards can follow.

This high-level overview of issues and possible ideas for how
performance metrics development work might be started is offered as an
initiator of discussion and more fruitful action. Some food for thought:

> "You can\'t build a reputation on what you are going to do."
>
> -- Henry Ford
>
> "Change is one thing, progress is another."
>
> -- Bertrand Russell
>
> "Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get
> if you don't."
>
> -- Pete Seeger
>
> "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change."
>
> -- A. N. Whitehead

There is no fine print presented in this brief exposition, as much could
be written, but it would take much longer and be harder to digest. The
desire is for commercial performance metrics to provide true progress
without leading to unruly disorder. All it takes is good resources,
maintenance of clear vision, cooperation, hard work, and perseverance.

## In Summary

-   The ability to define and measure what constitutes high performance
    for a commercial building has been identified as a major issue in
    the discussions leading up to the promulgation of the
    High-Performance Commercial Buildings technology roadmap in October
    2000

-   This white paper was developed to facilitate conceptualization and
    discussion of an eventual approach and methods to define and measure
    commercial building performance

-   The pursuit of a method to measure overall performance of commercial
    buildings, with flexibility to adapt where needed, should be viewed
    as growing from existing methods and helping to bring a more
    comprehensive picture of building performance to light

-   Rating the performance of buildings should be based on real
    performance over time, so that designers can receive feedback on the
    real performance of their designs and design process and so that
    ongoing real-world performance can be understood

-   A staged process of evaluation, segregating location domains during
    initial evaluation, and integrating evaluation results to obtain an
    overall rating for building and site later, may be very helpful to
    consider

-   Performance definition and metrics approaches must be developed
    within reasonable limits, not asking metrics to accomplish too much

-   A strawman framework is presented to facilitate conceptualization
    and initial discussion of an eventual approach and methods to define
    and measure commercial building performance

-   Only the top-level categories are presented for the strawman, under
    the premise that a top-down approach will be the most useful for
    testing and for gaining agreement on a final method

-   The proposed strawman does NOT address site or community issues
    acceptably, and additional work is needed to develop strawman
    concepts for those location domains and domain integration

-   Although significant resources exist for certain aspects of defining
    and rating commercial building performance, important development
    work is probably also needed to achieve a workable definition
    framework and rating process

-   Strong consideration should be given to developing an approximately
    80% solution for rating commercial building performance in the near
    term, so that testing of the methods may be conducted and
    recommendations for refinement or alteration developed. A 100%
    solution to rating commercial building performance is probably not
    possible, so expectations should be managed to accept nominal 80%
    levels initially, rising to nominal 90% levels over time.

-   Apart from the interests of the Roadmap, a serious look at methods
    to rate overall performance of commercial buildings appears highly
    worthwhile, with potentially important long-lasting benefits for the
    commercial buildings industry

# REFERENCES

Download this paper from:
<http://eber.ed.ornl.gov/commercialproducts/CWB.htm>

CBI 2000. *High-Performance Commercial Buildings, A Technology Roadmap*,
developed by representatives of the Commercial Building Industry,
available from the US Dept of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy Clearinghouse, 800-DOE-EREC (800-363-3732) or at
[www.eren.doe.gov/buildings/commercial_roadmap](http://www.eren.doe.gov/buildings/commercial_roadmap)
.

IEA 2000. *Building Envelopes in a Holistic Perspective*, International
Energy Agency / Energy Conservation in Buildings & Community Systems
(IEA-ECBCS) Annex 32 final report, Leuven, Belgium: Secretariaat Labo,
Bouwfysica, K.U.Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 131, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium Fax:
+32 16 32 19 80.

OECD 1997. *VOLUNTARY AGREEMENTS WITH INDUSTRY, Annex I Expert Group on
the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change*, Working
Paper No. 8, Unclassified OCDE/GD(97)75, Paris: Organisation for
Economic Co-Operation and Development (also try
<http://www.oecd.org/env/docs/cc/gd9775.pdf> ).

Sharp, T. R. 1996. "Energy Benchmarking in Commercial Office Buildings,"
*Proceedings of the 1996 ACEEE Summer Study*, pp 4.321--4.329,
Washington, DC: ACEEE.

Sharp, T. R. 1998. "Benchmarking Energy Use in Schools," *Proceedings of
the 1998 ACEEE Summer Study*, pp 3.305--3.316, Washington, DC: ACEEE.

Skopek , J. 1999. "BREEAM Strategy for Reducing Buildings' Environmental
Impact," *ASHRAE Transactions*, V **105** Pt 2, pp 811-818.

USGBC 2000. *LEED Green Building Rating System*, Version 2, Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design, (soon to be) Washington, DC: US
Green Building Council.