LZoj

NBSIR 83-2662

NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANOAROS LIBRARV

III | I III II I III III III II A11101 MSE771

Documentation and Assessment of the

GSA/PBS Building Systems Program:

Background and Research Plan

February 1983

V ^

^EAU

Center for Building Technology

National Bureau of Standards

Department of Commerce

Washington, D.C. 20234

Office of Design and Construction

Public Buildings Service

General Services Administration

Washington, D.C. 20405

RATIONAL BUREAU OF CTA-’IDAFtDS UBIIAPT APR 8 1983

rptaee,c«c .

NBSIR 83-2662

DOCUMENTATION AND ASSESSMENT OF THE

GSA/PBS BUILDING SYSTEMS PROGRAM:

BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH PLAN

Francis T. Ventre

U S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Bureau of Standards

National Engineering Laboratory

Center for Building Technology

Washington, DC 20234

February 1 983

Sponsored by

Public Buildings Service

General Services Administration

Washington, DC 20405

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, Malcolm Baldrige, Secretary

NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS, Ernest Ambler, Director
-
ABSTRACT

This report documents the origins and conduct of the General Services

Administration/Public Buildings Service (GSA/PBS) Building Systems Program

(BSP) undertaken during the 1970s and recommends a research plan for assessing

the effectiveness of the BSP. The report proposes specific methods for

assessing two outcomes of the BSP: the delivery of specified levels of performance for four attributes in the six buildings completed under the BSP and the

wider effects of the BSP on the building community.

/

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This report incorporates contributions from NBS staff members and consultants

knowledgeable in the diverse technical areas included in the Performance

Specifications for Office Buildings . These specialists lent their expertise to

the indentif ication of assessment methods and field procedures for Implementing

those methods. The specialists and areas of the report to which they

contributed were:

K. R. Eberhardt Statistical methods for sample surveys

T. Hattenburg Illumination measurements

R. W. Marans Perceptual/behavioral measurements; general

(University of Michigan) field methods

F. F. Rudder Acoustical measurements

S. Silberstein Air quality measurements

F. I. Stahl Experimental design

Several GSA/PBS staff members loaned documents and contributed advice (Including

comments on drafts of this report) as well as their personal recollections of

the BSP. Those contributors were: J. Parker, E. Striner and C. Thomas.

James G. Gross, Chief of the CBT Office of Construction Programs, offered

helpful comments at several stages. Final responsibility for the report as published, of course, rests with the author.

Cover Illustration:

The six BSP buildings , clockwise from upper right: SSA Western Program Center

,

Richmond CA ; SSA Headquarters Expansion, Computer Building , Woodlawn, MD;

SSA Mid-Atlantic Program Center , Philadelphia , PA; SSA Headquarters Expansion,

Metro West Building , Baltimore , MD; SSA Great Lakes Program Center, Chicago, IL;

Federal Building and Parking Facility , Norfolk, VA .

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv

LIST OF FIGURES vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

1. INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 BACKGROUND 1 1.2 OBJECTIVES 1 1.3 ORGANIZATION 3

2. DOCUMENTATION: BACKGROUND FOR THE BUILDING SYSTEMS PROGRAM (BSP) ... 4

2.1 HOW NEW BUILDINGS CAME ON STREAM 4

2.2 WHAT KINDS OF BUILDINGS CAME ON STREAM 4

2.3 PBS EFFORTS AT REFORM OF THE CONSTRUCTION PROCESS AND PRODUCT .. 5 2.4 WHAT THE BSP DID DIFFERENTLY 6

2.5 PRECEDENTS IN PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION 6

2.6 FROM SEQUENCE TO SYSTEM VIA THE TWO-STEP PROCUREMENT PROCESS ... 9

2.7 BSP's DISTINCTIVE GOALS AND APPROACHES 13

2.8 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS 14

3. DOCUMENTATION: EVOLUTION OF THE BUILDING SYSTEMS PROGRAM (BSP) 19

3.1 CONSTANT AIMS, CHANGING METHODS 19

3.2 RESPONSES OF THE SYSTEM OFFERS 23

4. DOCUMENTATION: HOW GSA/PBS SPECIFIED BUILDING PERFORMANCE 24

4.1 SELECTING BUILDING ATTRIBUTES 24

4.2 IDENTIFYING THE BUILDING ELEMENTS 25

5. THE FIELD ASSESSMENT PROCESS 28

5.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE ASSESSMENT 28

5.2 SELECTING ATTRIBUTES FOR FIELD ASSESSMENT 28

5.3 THE LOGIC OF FIELD ASSESSMENT 30

6. ASSESSING THE WIDER EFFECTS OF THE BSP 34

6.1 CHARACTERIZING THE INNOVATIVE ELEMENTS OF THE BSP 34

6.2 MEASURING THE BSP'S OUTCOMES 34

6.3 THREE TESTS OF BSP'S OUTCOMES 37

7. CONCLUSION 39

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

APPENDIX A. SUMMARY OF METRO WEST PILOT RUN A-l

A. 1 INTRODUCTION A-l

A. 2 SSA METRO WEST A-l

A. 3 MEASUREMENTS OF THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT A-6

A. 4 FORTUITOUS FINDINGS A-7

A. 5 CONCLUSIONS A-7

APPENDIX B. TECHNICAL COMMENT ON MEASUREMENT METHODS B-l

B. 1 REPRESENTING THE BSP STOCK B-l

B.1.1 Why Sampling B-l

B.2 APPROACHES TO SAMPLING B-l

B. 3 FACTORIAL EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN B-2

B .4 SELECTION IN THE FIELD B-3

B.5 PHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS B-5

B.5.1 Illumination B-5

B.5.Acoustics B-6

B.5.3 Conditioned Air (movement) B-6

B.5.

Planning (flexibility of interior space division) .. B-7

B . 6 PERCEPTUAL/ BEHAVIORAL MEASUREMENTS B-10

vi
LIST OF FIGURES

page

2.1 Basis of award 12

2.2 Matrix relating performance attributes to built elements 16

2.3 Ranges in performance potential io

3.1 Information flows and reporting relationships at the beginning

and at the end of the BSP 21

5.1 Logic of field assessment 32

A. 1 Architectual rendering of Metro West (view from the east) A-2

A. 2 Location of Metro West A3

A. 3 Section through Metro West A-4

A. 4 Metro West column, core and entrance plan A-5

vii
LIST OF TABLES

Page

1.1 Completed Building Systems Program Projects 2

2.1 Selected Precedents for Precoordinated Construction of Public

Buildings 7

2.2 Successive Editions of the Peach Book, with Issue Dates and

Abbreviated Designations 10

2.3 The "In System" and "Out of System" Elements of the Building

System Program 11

2.4 Relation of BSP’s Two-Step Procurement Process to Stage in the

Sequential Contracting Process 15

3.1 Summary of Changes to the Introductory Sections of Each Edition of

the Peach Book 22

5.1 Significant Technical Changes Incorporated in Each Edition of the

Peach Book and Rationales for the Changes 29

5.2 Building Performance Attributes Selected for NBS Field

Measurement 31

6.1 Outcomes of BSP Process and Product Innovations 35

B.l Potentially Significant Subdivisions of BSP Environments B-4

B. 5.4.1 Rate of Change and Area of Change Factors for Planned Change of

BSP Interiors B-8

viii
1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

In the early 1970s, the General Services Administration/Public Buildings

Service (GSA/PBS) broadened its facilities procurement procedures to include

such innovations as a "Two-step" procurement process; a wider use of "building

systems" concepts; articulation and coordination of "in-system" and "out-ofsystem" elements; the development and use of performance specifications for

building systems and subsystems; construction management for "phased" project

execution; and bid evaluation based on life cycle costs!. These innovations —

differing from "conventional" practice and later collectively named the PBS

Building Systems Program (BSP) — were introduced in three series of building

projects: Series I, Social Security Administration (SSA) Program Centers in

Richmond, CA; Chicago, IL; and Philadelphia, PA; Series II, SSA Administrative

Headquarters Expansions in Baltimore and Woodlawn, MD; and Series III, a multitenanted Federal office building in Norfolk, VA. The buildings are briefly

described in table 1.1.

Although the PBS Building Systems Program evolved continually through its

lifetime (roughly, the decade of the 1970s) , the program remained focused on the cost effective delivery over a structure's life cycle of "building performance which responds directly to the actual needs of building users." And,

while the project's primary reference was to the shelter needs of Federal

agencies, the program, from the start, anticipated the potential adoption of

any or all of the system's components by other government building agencies

(including States and municipalities) and by the private sector, particularly

the designers and builders of owner-occupied commercial offices.

1.2 OBJECTIVES

The GSA/PBS asked the National Bureau of Standards/Center for Building

Technology (NBS/CBT) to document and assess the Building Systems Program (BSP)

undertaken in the 1970s.

The objectives of the larger documentation and assessment project are:

o To assess how well the distinctive objectives of the PBS Building

Systems Program were met in the six facilities built to the several

editions of the Performance Specification for Office Buildings.

o To recommend, for implementation by PBS, opportunities for improved

building technology and building procurement practices.

1 GSA/PBS, Performance Specification for Office Buildings (The "Peach Book"),

3rd Edition, November 1975, pp. A-4 - A-9

2 GSA/PBS, Performance Specification ... A-l - A-3.

1
Size,

Use

and

(%

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BSP

Total)

Date

Office

Design

Construction

Designation,

Location

Gross*

Occupiable

Office

Utilization

In-systems

Contract

Substantially

Series

GSA

Identification

Number

K

ft^

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K

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Population

Rate**

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comparison:

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806 K

ft^
o To report on the advisability of implementing the Series III

(prequalification) approach to building procurement.

o To identify significant building technology and procurement issues

whose resolution will require further research.

The present report, however, has three more limited purposes. First, it

focuses exclusively on the attributes of the BSP procurement process and

resulting environments that were explicitly different from then-current "conventional" PBS practices. In other words, elements common to all processes

(conventional and BSP) are categorically excluded from the present analysis

which concentrates on the "In-system" building components. Second, this

report, having identified the BSP’s distinctive process and product objectives,

then establishes methods for measuring the extent to which these objectives

were achieved in the construction of the six buildings built during the BSP.

Third, means for documenting the extent to which BSP process and product innovations benefited the building community at large are described. The

project's findings will be presented in subsequent reports to GSA/PBS.

1.3 ORGANIZATION

This report is in two parts: a documentation section (Chapter 2-4) that is

largely a historical narrative and an assessment section (Chapters 5-6)

addressing issues of research method. The documentation section presents:

(1) a schematic crosswalk between the "conventional" GSA/PBS method of procuring newly-constructed buildings prevailing at the time the BSP was initiated

and the BSP's "Two-step" procurement process introduced in January, 1971. The

crosswalk illustrates how building procurement differed under the BSP; and

(2) a narrative and tabular representation of how the BSP objectives changed

as the BSP progressed through the four stages of its evolutionary development.

The documentation sections conclude with: (3) a discussion of GSA/PBS rationale

for selecting seven building performance attributes for including the

Performance Specification for Office Buildings (known familiarly as the "Peach

Book" )

.

The assessment section begins with: (4) NBS/CBT's criteria for selecting

attributes for field assessment and a discussion of attributes chosen; (5) a schematic representation of NBS/CBT's field assessment process, incorporating

both physical and behavioral measurement methods*; (6) a description of factors

influencing the approach taken to measure the extent of wider industry benefit

traceable to the process and product innovations of the BSP; and (7) specific

plans for measuring industry adoption of the "Peach Book" innovations. A brief

conclusion section ends the report.

* GSA/PBS subsequently postponed collecting the perceptual/behavioral

responses of the buildings' occupants.

3
2. DOCUMENTATION: BACKGROUND FOR THE BUILDING SYSTEMS PROGRAM (BSP)

2.1 HOW NEW BUILDINGS CAME ON STREAM

Virtually all GSA/PBS's procurement of newly-built federal office buildings in

the late 1960s followed the sequential "design-bid-construct" system, then the

prevalent one in the commercial and institutional sector of the Nation's

building industry While the sequential system had the advantage of retaining

very familiar and relatively clear contractual relations among the several

parties at interest, it was not without critics — both inside and outside PBS.

The sequential design-bid-construct system — whether employed in the private

or the public sector — was plagued in the late 1960s with cost increases that

far exceeded the rises in the costs of goods and services in the economy as a whole. Rising costs of various factor inputs to construction (unit costs of

materials, labor, and capital, for instance) contributed to this increase and more economical building design practices were pursued to control these costs.

But another approach drew the attention of the construction community: this was to attack what some industry analysts felt was the excessively long duration of the construction process. And, because the construction industry

makes heavy use of debt financing, the adage "Time is money" applies to con- struction with even stronger force. "How could buildings be completed faster?"

was the question before the industry as a whole.

2.2 WHAT KINDS OF BUILDINGS CAME ON STREAM

While budget analysts and controllers were concerned about mounting costs of new construction, others were concerned about the suitability, fitness for

purpose, and appearance of buildings in American cities and towns. The sleeklyfinished and often repetitive forms of modern architecture had, by the 1950s

and 1960s, grown visually stale to laymen and critic alike. Jane Jacobs 2 and

Lewis Mumford^, among countless others, derided the appearance and lack of

humanizing qualities in contemporary built form. Only slightly later, social

scientists began to look for scientific explanations for why buildings that met

technical criteria for safety and economy — and even those winning awards for

architectural excellence — evoked reactions of indifference and sometimes

hostility from the users for whom the buildings were intended. ^ If the users were employees, then, some argued (but could not yet demonstrate conclusively),

the lack of a supporting environment might even have negative consequences for

the productivity of the enterprise sheltered in the unsatisfactory buildings.

1 The term construction is used in this report to mean construction of buildings

only. That is, construction of highways and public works, such as sewer and

water systems and transportation projects, is not included except as noted.

2 The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage, 1981).

3 From the Ground Up , (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956).

4 Summarized in Brent C. Brolin, The Failure of Modern Architecture (New York:

Van Nostrand - Reinhold, 1976).

4
These kinds of ideas about environments were "in the air" at the time the BSP was conceived and initiated; acknowledging this atmosphere might help to

explain why PBS attempted, through the BSP and other methods, to reform

existing, and devise new, building procurement methods.

2.3 PBS EFFORTS AT REFORM OF THE CONSTRUCTION PROCESS AND PRODUCT

Among the "other" reforms PBS considered and adopted in the early 1970s was

the reconsideration of the entire building procurement process documented in

Construction Contracting Systems ^-. Some suggested changes addressed the

procedures of legislative authorization for, and funding of, building projects

or with the mechanics of contract award, inspection, acceptance, and payment.

These subjects are beyond the scope of the present study, however, and will

not be further considered.

The design-and-construct segments of the cited report, on the other hand,

indicated that the sequential process kept the several team members not only

apart from one another during the program-design-bid-build-evaluate process

but, even worse, required actions in advance by some participants that might

preempt the design and management inputs of team members (including GSA's own

staff) who joined the sequential process at a later point. Important cost-saving

options in building operations and maintenance, for instance, might be precluded

because previously made design decisions preempted them. The primary documentary link between occupants and designers was in the guide specifications that

GSA conveyed to the project’s designers. But GSA's own professionals reported

to the GSA Administrator that, despite a "crash effort" made in 1967 to improve

the guide specifications, "they may still be used in ways that are restrictive

and deny government buildings the latest developments in materials and construction techniques."

GSA building programming, according to the agency's internal study team,

referred more to the "manner" in which space was to be used as distinguished

from the "quality" of the space required. Moreover, the building program

generally lacked detail, forcing the architect to undertake research that

delayed commencement of design. "This results in slippage through remaining

sequences." But, the internal GSA team reported, the

...most significant cause of schedule slippage is the performance of

[design] reviews on a sequential basis with the architect stopping

work pending the completion of each review. [One further effect of

slippages is that designers] may find it impractical to assign the same personnel to the project throughout its life.

1 Construction Contracting Systems: A Report on the Systems Used by PBS and

Other Organizations , GSA/PBS, March 1970. All quotations in Section 2.3 are from this document.

5
2.4 WHAT THE BSP DID DIFFERENTLY

The BSP tried to overcome most of the aforementioned difficulties by introducing

a process for doing three things: 1) for defining the "qualities” of proposed

buildings in terms of the physical and psychological needs of the ultimate

users and not the "manner" of the buildings' construction or use; 2) for

constructing the users immediate surroundings not by a design-bid-construct

sequence of discrete and compartmentalized autonomous contractors, but by a single, unified team whose services were delivered not serially but in a single

package, an integrated "kit of parts": this kit was "The System" and its

components were referred to as the "In-System" parts of the planned BSP buildings. The interior of typical office floors — estimated to account for

40 percent of an office building's cost — would be assembled from this

"systems" kit; and 3) for introducing life cycle costing as a basis of procurement, making the initial design-build team responsible for the performance of

the user's environment for a specified period of time.

The initial private and public sector concern for cost containment was, in

theory, to be met on four fronts: 1 ) by treating design-bid-construct simultaneously rather than serially, time savings would accrue (after the initial

round of prototype building, of course); 2) life cycle costs would be known in

advance and, thereby, more amenable to control; 3) since federal office workers

the Nation over, would (or should) be working in environments of the same "quality", the unified interior package (kit of parts) could be reproduced

anytime an addition to PBS's stock of federal office buildings was contemplated,

thus, offering the possibility of scale economies in building procurement; and

4) since workers in commercial offices would need approximately the same "quality" of work environment, the suppliers of the federal office interior

systems could increase even further the return on their initial investment

in the research, development, design, and fabrication of the PBS office system

through sales of these interior systems to the private sector.

2.5 PRECEDENTS IN PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION

Ample American and foreign precedent existed at the time the GSA/PBS undertook

the BSP. Moreover, these precedents were made by public agencies who were dealing with technical problems not unlike those of GSA/PBS. One problem was

the need to expedite the construction process during postwar reconstruction in

England. That effort generated a "kit of parts" approach to a widely repeated

building type — schools — by 1948. California and Canadian precedents indicated that sophisticated environmental control systems also for educational

use, were attainable in new ways. All these new ventures, being public sector

enterprises, operated in the open view of the conventional construction service

firms in their respective locales and had attracted wide attention in the

professional press. Table 2.1 indicates the range of precedent available to

the BSP as far as the "product," the physical object, was concerned. But what

about the "process"? Here, GSA adapted practices from the American private

sector.

6
Table 2.1 Selected Precedents for Precoordinated Construction of Public Buildings

SYSTEM/ DATE LOCATION

DISTINCTIVE

FEATURES

SYSTEMS INCORPORATED

CLASP Consortium of

Local Authorities - Special Programme

1948 Local school authorities

in Hertfordshire, England. Drew world attention at 1960 Milan Triennale design exhibit

Structure and enclosure

system developed by private

fabricator (Brockhouse

Steel Structures, Ltd.)

Structural frame and exterior

cladding and fenestration^.

A "closed system"

to specifications prepared

by CLASP designees. Local architects and contractors

design and construct specific projects incorporating elements packaged by

Brockhouse but now manufactured by many suppliers.

Will use in other industrial countries.

Nenk Method 1960 Barracks rebuilt for 36th Engineers Corps

Regiment, Invicta Park,

Maidstone, England

Began with user interviews

to elicit design requirements what is now called

"predesign programming”

Used an existing structural

system but obtained industrygovernment cooperation on design and development of enclosure components .*5

SCSD 1961-

School Construction 1963

Systems Development

Pooled procurement for

22 schools in 13 California districts.

Prototype structure erected at Menlo Park,

CA. Supported by

Educational Facilities

Laboratory (EFL)

Educators and architects

devised an education specification, architects and

engineers converted to a performance specification

for a two-step procurement

process, a forerunner of that later adopted by

GSA/PBS

Structural; Ceiling-Lighting;

HVAC; Interior Partitions. An open system "kit of parts.

c

SEF Study for Educational Facilities

1965 Metropolitan Toronto

(Ontario, Canada)

School Board. Supported by EFL

Two-step procurement to specifications prepared

by education specialists

and building technologists

keyed to advanced concepts

in education. Schools in

Montreal, Buffalo, Florida

and Boston adopted variations of SEF approach.

Many used same subsystem

suppliers

Structure, HVAC, lightingceiling, interior space

division, "vertical skin,"

plumbing, electric-electronic,

"caseworks and furniture,"

roofing, interior finish.

Open system of ten subsystems

(award procedure allowed four

acceptable proposals per subsystem yielding 1,048,576

possible systems)4*.

7
Table 2.1 (Continued)

SYSTEM/ DATE LOCATION DISTINCTIVE

FEATURES

SYSTEMS INCORPORATED

RAS Recherche en Amanagement

Scolaire

1968 Montreal (Quebec, Canada)

Catholic School Commission.

Supported by EFL.

Life cycle costing formula

based on predicted service

life of each component and

a realistic discount rate.

"Closed" system of subsystem

manufacturers bidding as teams.

URBS University

Residential

Building System

1965 Various University of California campuses

Early U6e of construction

management by an institutional client to fix large

fraction of cost at early

stage of building process.

Principle innovations were not

in hardware systems. e

NYSUA

New York State Dormitory

Authority

1968 Various public and private

institutions in New York State Modified turning into

phased deslgn/bulld process undertaken by prequalified

teams of contractors,

architects and engineers.

Principle innovation was in

prequalification of teams, not hardware systems. 1

SUSA

State University

System of Alaska

1970 Nine projects on Seven sites

in Alaska

Linked phase design/build

with subsystems procurement

to achieve completion in 20 months

Largely drawn from subsystems

initially developed to meet SCSD performance criteria. 1-

a Barry James Sullivan, Industrialization In the Building Industry , (New York. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980), 90-91.

b Institute for Applied Technology, National Bureau of Standards, Building Systems Innovation , a report prepared for the Commissioner of the Public Buildings Service, General Services Administration, December 1965.

c Michael Glover (editor) Alternative Processes; Building Procurement, Design and Construction , IF Occasional Paper No. 2, Industrialization Forum at the University of Illinois (March 1976), pp. 57-67.

^ Sullivan, Industrialization in the Building Industry , pp. 91-124.

e Ezra Ehrenkrantz Critique in Leo A. Daly Case History, p. 251.

^ Doug Hasbrouck and Phil Bobrow, in Glover, IF Occasional Paper No. 1 , pp. 37-41.

8 David B. Hattis, Letter, AIA Journal , December 1973, p. 55.

h Glover, IF Occasional Paper No. 2 , p. 64.

1 Ehrenkrantz, p. 252.

8
2.6 FROM SEQUENCE TO SYSTEM VIA THE TWO-STEP PROCUREMENT PROCESS

In place of a seven-element sequence of conventional procurement for new office

buildings, PBS offered a "Two-Step" process for the development of a building

interior "system" that could be inserted into an otherwise "out of system"

building that had been built conventionally. The seven elements of conventional

building arel:

® A-E Selection

• Preliminary planning

® Design

o Bid and Award

® Construction

(including changes)

• Inspection

9 Acceptance

PBS intended to displace the seven-element sequence by soliciting from any

person or entity qualified to do business with the government technical proposals for "furnishing and installation of building components" for certain

federal office buildings, the buildings themselves to be individually designed

by architects "who will employ in their final design the components herein

solicited." The components' performance was specified in the Performance

Specification for Office Buildings ^ (later known familiarly as "The Peach

Book") which evolved, subsequently, through three editions (listed in table

2.2) and numerous amendments from which the previous and following quotations

are condensed.

The Two-Step procurement is comprised of

:

STEP ONE — TECHNICAL PROPOSAL - to be evaluated against the General

Requirements and System Performance Specification sections of the

Peach Book. Step One evaluation proceeded with no "consideration of

price or pricing data." The elements of the proposed building to be

included in the systems procurement and the separately contracted-for "Out of System" elements with which they were to interact are listed

in Table 2.3.

STEP TWO — BID - offerors of proposals deemed "acceptable" in Step One

are invited to bid the installed price of the proposal system. The

basis of award includes the considerations of maintenance and

operation costs over a specified service life and is illustrated

in figure 2.1.

1 Adopted from Construction Contracting Systems .

2 See footnote 1, page 1.

9
Table 2.2 Successive Editions of the Peach Book, with Issue Dates and

Abbreviated Designations

Formal Title Issued Abbreviated

Designation

Location of

Application

Performance specification

for office buildings

January 1971 PB : 1

Performance specification

for office buildings

(revised)

September 1971 PB : 1 Series I: Philadelphia, PA

Chicago ,IL

Richmond, CA

Performance specification

for office buildings

(Second Edition)

June 1973 PB : 2 Series II

Baltimore ,MD

Woodlawn, MD

The PBS Building Systems

program and performance

specification for

office buildings

(Third Edition)

November 1975 PB :3 Series III

Norf oik , VA

10
Table 2.3 The "In-System" and "Out-of -System" Elements of the Building

Systems Program

SUBSYSTEM

BUILDING ELEMENTS

INCLUDED IN TWO-STEP

PROCUREMENT AND CONSIDERED

"IN-SYSTEM"

TREATED UNDER CONVENTIONAL

CONTRACTOR PROCEDURES AND

CONSIDERED "OUT-OF-SYSTEM"

Structure Structural frame and deck

Fireproofing

Foundations

Stairs in cores

HVAC Air handling

Filtration

Heat exchange

Distribution

Control elements

Generating plant (sic)

Electrical

distribution

Office power raceway

Telephone raceway

Signal raceway

Floor outlets

Luminaire wiring (sic)

Switchgear

Office power wiring

Telephone wiring

Luminaires Lamps, ballasts to provide

uniform, task-oriented,

and background lighting

Luminaires in out-of -system

spaces (e.g., corridors,

toilets, lobbies)

Finished floor Resilient flooring

Carpet

Flooring in out-of-system

spaces (e.g., corridors,

toilets, lobbies)

Finished ceiling Ceiling in offices Ceiling in out-of -system

spaces (e.g., corridors,

toilets, lobbies)

Space dividers Partitions

Doors and hardware

Free-standing screens Column enclosures

Fixed walls (e.g., at

utility cores, building

envelope)

Adapted from an undated GSA brochure Office Building by System used to elicit

wider building community interest in the BSP.

11
a> .a a- a. a - g.

<u -e g- £ 5 ”

w =• *5

TO

c

_o3

c

TO 2

t—o

.o c

o in 3 JE1 O 4-* “E =3 *— TOO TO c

_© =

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tn "OoTO

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"c

-3

TO

00 *e

cE3

t

TOCL > *

O o T TO a.

JSJ 153

ETO

4-* O* 00

TO >»

00

Figure 2.1 Basis of award. (Adapted from the Leo A. Daly (unpublished) report

to PBS, The System Approach for Building Acquisition: A Case

History of the GSA/SSA Program Centers System Building Project:

1971-1975, January 1976, p. 87.

12
After the selection of the successful system, the previously-designated

architects of the conventionally-constructed building were instructed to prepare their final designs completing the Out-of-System design and incorporating

the successful system for the typical interiors of the office floors of the

total structure.

The Two-Step System procurement process shared many objectives of the

conventional PBS sequential procurement process — cost effectiveness and

architectural excellence, to mention just two. But some of the BSP goals were distinctive and had no counterpart in conventional procurement. These are listed later, as are a number of features that distinguished the BSP approach

from the conventional, sequential process. But more important than the

specific listing of goals and approaches was something harder to define but

which nevertheless provided the driving energy of the BSP: this was a thoroughgoing committment to user needs-oriented technological innovation as the

primary means for providing new federal offices. Whereas the previous building

procurement procedures and documentation seemed to give primary emphasis to

government as fiduciary of the public's funds under a restrictive, "zerodefects" approach to fiscal management, the BSP documents envisioned a bold

new technological future for the commercial office building sector of the

construction industry, with government leading the way into that future. To

be sure, fiduciary responsibilities were not ignored, and all BSP procurements

scrupulously followed Federal regulations, but the dominant mood of the entire

procurement enterprise was one of technologically advanced methods for providing more satisfying and productive environments for federal office workers.

This mood was manifested in many ways: in the large number of meetings

convened to acquaint members of the building community with the new approachl

and in audiovisual presentations and brochures prepared for the same purpose.

Analyzing the several editions of the Peach Book reveals that this eager sense

of mission even found its way into the early editions of the procurement

documents

.

2.7 BPS's DISTINCTIVE GOALS AND APPROACHES

The differences between the BSP and the conventional approach are highlighted

in table 2.4. The sequential steps of the conventional process are arranged

across the top of the chart; the five elements of the BSP procurement down the

left stub. For some of the intercepts in the resulting matrix, the conventional steps would be carried out as before. This occurs in Row 2 where the

out -of -system elements of the new building — siting, foundations, exterior

envelope, special purpose spaces (including lobbies and auditoriums) and primary energy conversion equipment -were still handled under conventional

sequencing of separate contracts with different contractors. The offerors of

the "In-System" office interiors have no role here and the project architect is

1 For example, "More than 100 industry representatives attended GSA's recent

systems offerors conference...". Building Design and Construction, November

1974.

13
responsible for design decisions at the interface between the in-system and

out-of-system components.

In Row 1, the system offerors complete the preliminary planning and design

functions in order to qualify their systems for later competition. Recall that

the Peach Book required no cost data at Step One of the new Two-Step procurement

process.

Row 3 appears to coincide with the award phase of the sequential system. The

basis for award, however, runs far beyond the lowest responsible bid based on first cost. Rather, the lump-sum bid required at Step Two of the Two-Step

process was to reflect costs of maintenance and operation over a range of ser- vice lives specified for different building components. Thus, Step Two was to

bring life-cycle costs to the heart of the BSP. The several sets of factors

comprising the basis of award is illustrated in figure 2.2, which, incidentally,

is an accurate representation of the total BSP as operated in the earlier

years. Row 4 indicates other ways that BSP differs from conventional sequencing

of construction. In conventional work, most inspection and acceptance steps occur after the structure is completed and is nearing occupancy. But these

steps, certifying that the system components (installed and tested in a prototype) comply with the performance specifications, were taken before the out-ofsystem working drawings for the entire project (entrained in the sequence of

conventional procurement) were even completed. Primary responsibility for

Row 5 reverts to the construction manager for the total project who, in this

phase, breaks the out -of -system work into bid packages, awards contracts

and coordinates construction of in- and-out-of-system elements. The system

team did not install the system elements — the out-ofsystem contractor did

that — but the system contractor was to complete field tests as soon as the

installation was complete.

It is clear from the foregoing that traditional relations in the construction

process were sharply modified and redefined. GSA enhanced the construction

management function and introduced an Executive/ Architect-Engineer (later

called Systems Consultant) role to establish a new network of information-flow

since the traditional contractual relations of sequential construction no longer applied.

2.8 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATIONS

GSA/PBS conveyed to prospective supplies the desired qualities of the Federal

office environment by means of the Peach Book specification. Although massive

in size, the Peach Book's technical core, the "System Performance Specification", is organized with great clarity. The BSP's performance approach is

embedded in the 49 cells of the seven by seven matrix illustrated in figure 2.2.

Each intercept of the matrix refers to more detailed information, recorded in

the System Performance Specification section of each edition of the Peach Book, on how the built elements (the "hardware" of figure 2.1 and the "subsystems" of

table 2.3) provide and control the desired performance attributes of the federal

office environment. The seven-by-seven matrix imposed a rational consistency

to the organization of each of the Peach Books, but the symmetry of the square

matrix should not be misinterpreted to represent a consistent quality and

14
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15
BUILDING

PROCESS

QUALIFYING

MANUFACTURE <*

D

SHIPPING

CONSTRUCTION X

SUPPORT EIUILT ELEIKENTS: H ARDWARE

UJu.—

TASK

PSYCHOLOGICAL

1

STRUCTURE 2

HVAC 3

ELECTRICAL

DISTRIBUTION

4

LUMINAIRES 5

FINISHED

FLOOR 6

FINISHED CEILING 7

SPACE

DIVIDERS

a CONDITIONED

AIR

b ILLUMINATION A

oo

C ACOUSTICS

A§>

UJ—

=>

COCO

hd STABILITY DURABILITY Nr HEALTH &

e 4 SAFETY

f MAINTENANCE

g

PLANNING

Figure 2.2 Matrix relating performance attributes to built elements

16
importance of the information among the cells. While all the information

organized by the performance matrix was necessary to achieve the BSP objectives,

the significance of that information varied widely enough from cell-to-cell to

suggest not a consistently flat, two-dimensional gridded plane of uniformly

definitive information but, rather, a three-dimensional relief map of prisms,

each of whose volumes represent varying degrees of reliable knowledge of

building performance. Indeed, writing a correct performance statement requires

much more systematic and thorough knowledge than writing a prescriptive specification. The variability of reliable performance information available during

the writing of the Peach Book is illustrated in figure 2.3 and discussed in the

detailed plans for assessment of the six buildings completed during the BSP

(found in Chapters 5 and 6).

The information at each intercept of the performance matrix was contained in

three categories:

REQUIREMENT—the qualitative statement of the desired performances for

the environment;

CRITERIA—a quantification of such desired performance; and

TEST—evaluative techniques assuring (sic) conformance with the criteria^.

Isolating these elements of a performance specification is essential for a valid design evaluation, to be taken up in later chapters. The careful assessment of the completed building against initial design criteria becomes, when

shared widely, a part of the collective memory of the building community and,

consequently, a basis for improved design in the future2.

1 PB:1, p. B6. The terminology of the performance approach has grown in

precision since the pioneering GSA/NBS effort of 1971, but the original Peach

Book terms are retained throughout this project. Current international usage

may be found in CIB Report : Working with the Performance Approach in Buildings , Publication 64, January, 1982.

2 While criticizing a building by criteria extrinsic to the building process

that produced it may be an enlighting exercise in the architectural connoisseurship, such criticism should not to be confused with evaluation, the

essential feedback link in the continuing design-build-evaluate process.

There is little realistic hope for improved design without systematic evaluation traceable to clearly articulated design objectives.

17
Figure 2.3 Ranges in performance potential
3. DOCUMENTATION: EVOLUTION OF THE BUILDING SYSTEMS PROGRAM (BSP)

The previous section of this report described the intended differences between

the BSP and the conventional sequential approaches. But the BSP itself underwent many changes from its inception in the early 1970s to its termination

about 10 years later. The section that follows reviews the elements of the

BSP as they evolved during that decade of experiment.

3.1 CONSTRAINT AIMS, CHANGING METHODS

The BSP evolved continually during its life, but it never deviated from the

main pursuits of user-oriented, performance-specified, life cycle costcontrolled procurement of flexible interior systems for federal office buildings. While these ends were constant, the means were constantly changing. The

single best way to read how the BSP evolved is to analyze carefully the content

of the several editions of the performance specification and a few other of the

elements comprising the basis of award (figure 2.1). This section analyzes

the differences among introductory sections of all published editions of the

Peach Book. Later phases of the current project will examine in detail the

changing technical content of the System Performance Specification segments of

the several editions of the Peach Book.

The introductory sections are analyzed first because they reflect the broadest,

most inclusive view of the BSP and the goals it sought. The subdivisions of

these sections address the "process" concerns of the BSP, while the System

Performance Specification, to be analyzed later in the project, addresses the

"product" of the BSP.

The organization of the introductory portions of the Peach Book itself changed

over time, making a strict section-for-section comparison difficult, if not

impossible. Nevertheless, reading these portions of the several Peach Books in

rapid succession reveals a definite shift in tone: the initial Peach Books were full of missionary zeal, proselytizing in behalf of higher quality

buildings delivered at lower costs within shorter schedules; but the Third

Edition was pure procurement.

The BSP goals were further specified in all the editions into design objectives

by means of a thorough-going application of the performance approachl. Full

development and implementation of the performance approach would, argued the

early Peach Books, liberate the design imagination of the system offerors. The

federal officials responsible for BSP pointed out that the size of the initial

federal procurement and the sales to the private sector office construction

market that were expected to follow would persuade the manufacturers of building

products to invest the necessary developmental funds needed to "qualify" a

1 A useful guide to this approach based on experience in several countries

since the pioneering GSA/NBS effort is CIB Report : Working with the

Performance Approach in Building , Publication 64, January 1982, available from

CIB in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

19
system. The result would be a technological giant step forward for the

building community with the Federal Government in the vanguard.

The Third Edition of the Peach Book (November 1975), however, told the same story but in a very different way. No more rhapsodic preaching: the Third

Edition is couched in the guarded and precise language of government procurement policy! Does this signify that the great innovative thrust had been spent

by the time of the Third Edition? Such a judgment would be premature at this

stage of the BSP assessment. It is equally plausible, for instance, that the

earlier, innovative thrust succeeded and had been so thoroughly absorbed into

the industry mainstream with whom the government was now dealing that exhortations to innovate would have been preaching to the already converted. While

that determination cannot be made with finality at this point in the project,

there are two indications that the "routinization of innovation" hypothesis

may be the correct interpretation of the "preaching to procurement" changes in

the Peach Book's tone. Both indications relate to the BSP process rather than

to its physical performance.

First, the information flows and reporting relationships of the principal

participants, already different from roles in the sequential system,

changed markedly from the Series I building projects (started in September 1971)

to the Series III (begun in November 1975). The shifts that occurred were from

an intensely interactive, collective decisionmaking network integrated by an Executive Architect/Engineer in a central information management role in Series

I towards the hierarchical arrangement (particularly with respect to the system

offeror) more typical of conventional construction contracting. The Series I and Series II arrangements are illustrated in figures 3.1a and 3.1b respectively.

Not only did the organizational relation shift toward a traditional deployment,

that deployment actually became a part of the PBS's instructions to prospective

participants. Whereas, the relations illustrated in figure 3.1a evolved

"naturally" from the actual experience of implementing the precedent-setting

Series I building process, by the time Series II was undertaken the managerial

precedent was sufficiently routinized to permit its inclusion in the Peach Book

itself as an operating procedure expected of all successful bidders. That

certainly supports the "routinization of innovation" hypothesis.

The second indication supporting that hypothesis was the gradual shifting in

the amount of space that the several editions of the Peach Book assigned to

the introductory topics. The Peach Book sections discussing goals and the

process and management philosophy of the BSP were reduced from 90 pages in the

First Edition to 40 in the Third Edition. The more technically-oriented sections addressing general requirements and procurement, on the other hand,

grew from 63 to 102 pages between the initial and last publication of the

Peach Book. The shifts are recorded in table 3.1. Moreover, the later editions

made greater use of diagrams to convey very explicitly what had been introduced

verbally and in a general way in the earlier editions. The map of information

flow in figure 3.1b came from the Peach Book but the flow in figure 3.1a grew

organically out of the work itself and was mapped "after the fact."

20
a Series I Projects^

(September 1971)

b

Series II Projects-

(November 1975)

LegendPM Project Manager (GSA) CO Contracting Officer (GSA)

(analogous CM Construction Manager CM Construction Manager

functions E/AE Executive Architect/Engineer SC System Consultant

are on same R/AE Regional Architect/Engineer A/E Architect /Engineer

horizontal

line)

SO/SC System Offeror/System Contractor SO System Offeror

1 From the Leo A. Daly (unpublished) Report to PBS, The Systems Approach for Building

Acquisition .

^ From Peach Book, Third Edition, November 1975, p. 89.

Figure 3.1 Information flows and reporting relationships at the beginning

and the end of the BSP

21
Table 3.1 Summary of Changes to the Introductory Sections of Each

Edition of the Peach Book

Section

Addressing PB : 1 PB : 1R PB:2 PB :3

Goals Exhortations to enhiince quality Toned down expla- Deleted exhortations

Critique of current methods and deriva- nation. Critiques but retained primacy

tion of new concepts. Explains perfor- reduced. of user needs, ini- mance approach to meeting user needs tiated procurement

and systems thinking. steps for

"prequalification"

pages 19 19 17 13

Process and Introduces Two-Step procurement as formal method. A single Only systems passing

Management contract is set for system installation in all buildings. Step One invited to Multiple contracts of out-of-system work at each building. bid. Each BSP

building was to be

bid separately.

pages 71 71 35 27 + diagrams + diagrams

General Introduced standard Introduced concept

Requirements building operating of "rates of

procedure and clari- change" to specify

fied items in fig- flexibility in ure 2. shifting partitions.

pages 30 32 44 43

System PBS spells out evali.lation criteria for sysstem selection and [System offerors

Procurement contractual requirements among the parties. Basis of award licensed technoloas shown in figure 2.1. gies to smaller

firms, allowing

Language clarified LCC confined to them to bid on throughout. mechanical equip- subsystems .

ment maintenance

cost. Drops janitorial services

from specification

pages 33 40 52 59

|

22
3.2 RESPONSES OF THE SYSTEM OFFERORS

Several scores of vendors expressed interest in the BSP procurement. Nine

consortiums of building product suppliers, designers (architectural and

engineering) , and contractors submitted Step One technical proposals in response

to the initial GSA solicitation; of these three were deemed qualities to bid

the Series I (Philadelphia, Chicago; Richmond, CA) projects and only two submitted price proposals. In Series II (Baltimore; Woodlawn, MD), only three

consortiums submitted Step One technical proposals; and in Series III, two

Step One technical proposals were received.

The principal variation in the technical approaches of the Series I offerors

was in the structural systems: two proposed steel-framed systems and one,

concrete. Further distinctions among the offers approaches will be presented

later in this project after more participants will have been consulted. Also,

the project will later attempt to identify reasons for the apparent reluctance

of the prospective offerors to participate in the BSP.

23
4. DOCUMENTATION: HOW GSA/PBS SPECIFIED OFFICE BUILDING PERFORMANCE

4.1 SELECTING BUILDING ATTRIBUTES

Buildings may be described in as many ways as there are ways of knowing them:

as physical objects; as reifications of socially-valued meaning—including

psychological, economic, and symbolic meaning; and as objects built to achieve

specific, operational purposes. The BSP, as chapter 3 describes, placed primary emphasis on the cost effective provision of the "quality" of spaces

required for efficient conduct of federal office functions rather than on detailed descriptions of the "manner" in which space was to be used. The

qualities of these spaces were defined by a careful characterization and specification of the federal office occupants' needs for environmental support.

These user requirements were drawn out from user's representatives, including

managers, in a manner more meticulous than previously* and then, to liberate

the designer' 8 imagination and to stimulate technical innovation, to describe

those desired qualities in performance terms. This led to the identification

of the seven attributes of the office environment illustrated in figure 2.1.

These seven attributes, of course, would also be desirable in private sector

offices as well, so that any combination of subsystems capable of producing

environments with these attributes would find a much wider market than the

Federal Government alone.

The process of selecting only seven attributes was a long and deliberate one.

As early as December, 1965, the NBS Institute for Applied Technology (predecessor of the National Engineering Laboratory) reported to the PBS Commissioner

that targets of technical opportunity in new office buildings were the

...need for improved performance-cost benefits for building

Expandability, Flexibility, and Maintainability ^.

The American and foreign precedents described in section 2.5 showed that wide areas free from the intrusion of structural columns and superior luminous and

acoustical qualities greatly increased the effectiveness of classrooms and NBS

indicated that office buildings would similarly benefit^. NBS work on the further selection began with a single staff member in the summer of 1966 and grew

to a three-person team plus numerous consulting specialists. Fourteen office

buildings were analyzed in detail and an average of one hundred employees per

* Two other efforts had been made to draw out from user representatives a very

careful specification of user requirements. These were the "Nenk Method"

used to build a British Engineers Regiment Barracks at Maidstone, England in

1960 and the SCSD project in California a few years later. Other precedents

are listed in table 2.1.

Building Systems Innovation , p. 7. (Original italics).

^ Building Systems Innovation, p. 17.

24
building were interviewed to provide the basis for identifying and

characterizing important environmental attributes 1.

4.2 IDENTIFYING THE BUILDING ELEMENTS

A theorist could argue that a "pure" performance approach to building

procurement Is compromised when categories of building hardware expected to

deliver the stipulated performance are identified. But to be operationalized

in an actual building procurement process, the performance specification must

be capable of serving as a contractual link between a building owner and a supplier (whether a manufacturer, fabricator, installer or builder) of the

technologies capable of delivering the required performance attributes.

Moreover, the objectives of the BSP included a specific intent to encourage the

American building Industry’s technical innovation to a broad class of office

building design, construction, and operating challenges, and to do so in a costeffective manner. For these reasons, the Peach Book addressed hardware in terms

of building elements with which the American building product manufacturers were

familiar. The further question arose as to whether the hardware specification

should follow an "open system" approach — where subsystems would be solicited

from individual suppliers, thus to encourage the interchangeability of components; or a "closed system" approach — where consortiums of suppliers would

be invited to bid already-integrated systems of components. American,

Canadian, and English precedents existed for both open and closed systems by

the late 1960s. These precedents, summarized in table 2.1, also showed that

a range of subsystems could be included in a total package.

The choice between open and closed system ultimately reduces to a trade-off

between freeing the designer to reach functional optimality or imposing on designers such constraints as are needed for deliverability , reliability and

economy. On the one hand, open systems offer for the designers of a specific

building freedom to choose from among a great variety of standardized parts and

allowing those designers to assemble one of a very large number of theoretically possible permutations of those parts on specific site in a uniquely

optimal way. Closed systems, on the other hand, strive for maximum degree of

subsystem integration with greater assurance of total system reliability and

cost control, relinquishing some local designer autonomy and system optimization in the bargain. Presented with this dichotomy, GSA, it appears, struck a third choice between the two poles. That choice achieved some important BSP

objectives but also increased appreciably the operational difficulties of the

program. GSA chose to treat the total federal office building and its site as an open system while treating the interiors of the typical office floor as a closed system. GSA parlance for this composite method: "Out-of-System" (OS)

and "In-System" (IS). Siting, foundations, exterior envelope, circulation and

special purpose spaces (including vertical utility cores, lobbies, and auditoriums) and primary energy conversion equipment were handled Out-of-System

1 Robert Blake "The ’Peach Book' and the GSA" in Answers for the Building

Community: Optimizing the Choices, Industrialization Forum (IF) Occasional

Paper No. 3, September 1976, p. 49.

25
(OS) by regional architects, engineers, and builders. These elements were

specified, designed and built under conventional sequencing of separate con- tracts with a single general contractor at each of the six BSP sites.

The composite method's "In-System" portion was comprised of a single closed

system of the seven subsystems listed in table 2.3. The In-System (IS) portion

for all buildings of a given series was to be bid and awarded as a single

total package to be fabricated and installed in each of the not-yet designed

OS buildings at sites still to be chosen.

The operational difficulties induced by the precise IS/OS split GSA made have

not been minimized by any of the BSP's participants and observers. But the

efficacy of the particular IS/OS split GSA and its consultants chose must be

evaluated both in terms of what were perceived to be important considerations

in the early 1970s (when the choices were made) and then in the light of current

knowledge. Prominent among the earlier considerations were:

1) the encouragement of "diversity in building plan and exterior

appearance and compatibility with regional surroundings 1 , thus

avoiding the emergence of a single architectural style for

federal office buildings." A response to this consideration

would be a tendency to define a system of narrower scope,

allowing greater autonomy for the regional architect;

2. the continuing managerial goal of minimizing procurement

processing while maximizing the degree of cost control. This was sought by investing authority, responsibility, and ultimately, economic and legal liability in a single contracting

entity and it evoked a tendency to widen the system's scope.

Indeed, this consideration triumphed in Series I where GSA

purchased the IS portions of the three SSA Program Centers

(1.9 million gross square feet) with a single contract; the

OS portions, of those three structures, however, required 67

separate purchase contracts )2;

3. the aggregated subsystems would need to be diverse enough to

induce synergy among the several subsystems and large enough

so that cost savings realized from the IS elements would have

a recognizable impact on total project cost. This consideration lead to a planned IS/OS split of 40 percent/60 percent

1 Leo A Daly, Case History of the GSA/SSA Project (brief title), p. 35.

2 Report of the Comptroller General, General Services Administrations Use of

New Construct ion Concept for Federal Buildings Not Yet Successful (Washington:

General Accounting Office, October 6, 1977) . p. 4.

26
of project costs*; The Series I buildings actually achieved a

28 percent/72 percent split 2.

Imbedded in this last choice was the implicit setting of the IS/OS boundary.

The specific elements of IS hardware each had to:

o be subject to standardization due to a similarity of design

requirements in typical federal office buildings;

o be usable over a wide geographical and climatic range;

o together, make up a considerable percentage of total construction

cost

o be susceptible to technical improvements and/or cost reduction;

o directly influence the user's working environment. This assessment

resulted in the seven subsystems listed in the row across the top of

figure 2.1.

Elements which would have difficulty meeting these criteria were excluded, and

were assigned "out-of-system." Typical out-of-system elements are: exterior

walls, foundations, HVAC generating and electrical switching equipment and

roofing. These are listed in table 2.3.

With these considerations in mind GSA and its consultants, having already

chosen the user-oriented performance characteristics to be provided by the

building system, turned to the selection of the elements of hardware that were

to deliver the specific performance. Further, while most of these performance

characteristics were to come from within the system, other characteristics would

by strongly affected by hardware in the building fabric but outside that system.

Conditioned air is the most conspicuous example of this, especially in the

perimeter zones of the typical floors.

The origin of the division of in and out-of -system components is shown in

table 2.3 is thus explained. The remainder of this report discusses the

in-system aspects of the BSP only, except as noted.

* "Office Building by System", undated GSA brochure prepared by the Leo A. Daly

Company and Ezra D. Ehrenkrantz Associates joint venture. The Peach Book

had estimated that the floor-ceiling sandwich (FSS)" alone would be 36 percent of project cost. (Peach Book, First Edition, p. B5).

2 "Three government buildings...". Building Systems Design, October, November,

1974, p. 4.

27
5. THE FIELD ASSESSMENT PROCESS

5.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE ASSESSMENT

The preceding chapters described the origins and influences on the initiation,

development and execution of the BSP, an effort begun in the late 1960s and not

completed until the end of the 1970s. The following chapters describe NBS/CBT's

approach to assessing the effectiveness of the BSP in meeting the performance

targets specified in the Peach Book (and not , except in one case, the adequacy

or correctness of those targets).

5.2 SELECTING ATTRIBUTES FOR FIELD ASSESSMENT

The BSP's performance approach to the procurement of new federal office buildings

is embedded in the 49 cells of the seven by seven matrix illustrated in figure

2.1. The 49 intercepts occurred in each of three versions of the Peach Book

that served as bidding documents during the BSP (yielding, incidentally, 147

potential starting points for field assessment).

While all 49 cells were accounted for in the initial preprocurement evaluations

of candidate hardware systems, field tests on all of them would have severely

intruded on the building and office operations at the six BSP sites. Consequently, NBS/CBT nominated and GSA/PBS concurred 1 in selecting for this study a smaller number of highly significant performance attributes and hardware

components. Attributes were sought that:

1) had most impact (positive and negative) or achieving BSP objectives,

considered in retrospect;

2) stimulated spontaneous user response (mostly, but not exclusively,

complaints)

3) prior evaluations found critical to achieving BSP objectives;

4) were initially forecast to be the occasion of greater than usual

technical advance. Indeed, table 5.1 reveals advances occurred from

one edition of the Peach Book to the other;

5) were outwardly obvious to non-specialist building users;

6) would be accessible to the unobtrusive measurement methods planned by

NBS ; and

7) occupied different places on the performance continuum.

1 Monthly Progress Review, August 16, 1982.

28
Table 5.1 Significant Technical Changes Incorporated in Each Edition of

the Peach Book and Rationales for the Changes

Edition Significant Changes Rationales*

PB: 1

PB:1R a : HVAC subsystem broadened beyond

local distribution to include

all delivery system except prime

energy converters

a : greater technical

and commercial

incentive for indus

try participation;

introduce wider

scope for design

trade-offs

PB :2

PB : 3

b : redefinition of reporting require- b : greater clarity

ments (e.g., express space adjustment

costs in man-hours rather than dollars)

total revision of acoustical performance specifications

c : incorporated results

of prototype testing

for Series I buildings and advances in

the state-of-the-art;

to accommodate

"open plan” approach

to office design

d : HVAC system to extended to

include perimeter zones and

prime energy converters

d : too difficult to

sort out interdependent performance

of perimeter and

interior systems

e : revision of lighting performance

specifications

f : deleted custodial maintenance

e : effort made to include high-intensity

discharge lighting

(to conserve energy);

ESI, a quality measurement replaced

foot candles , a quantity measurement

f : too difficult to

quantify

g : formally established "prequalification of systems in

advance of actual need for a specific building project

g : an effort made to

shorten length

of building design

phase by decoupling

from systems procurement

* Rationales inferred from analyses of GSA/PBS documentation, oral histories, and

contemporary accounts in the professional and trade press.

29
In consideration of the foregoing factors, NBS/CBT nominated and GSA/PBS

concurred^ in the choice of four attributes for more detailed field assessment.

The attributes and the rationale leading to their selection are summarized in

the first two columns of table 5.2. (The third column is discussed in Appendix

C. 5)

5.3 THE LOGIC OF FIELD ASSESSMENT

GSA, under the terms of the BSP, purchased and installed only those candidate

hardware systems whose vendors certified as having met the Peach Book requirements, criteria, and tests. One objective of the present NBS project is to assess the extent to which those hardware systems are performing after several

years of service. The most straightforward way to make this determination is

to develop counterpart tests for use at the six buildings. Figure 5.1,

explained in more detail below, illustrates the overall scheme for doing this

work.

Although the matrix structure of 49-cells was retained through the life of the

BSP, some of the information within the "requirement", criteria" and "test"

categories changed from one edition of the Peach Book to another. Moreover,

the "test" category of each cell often referenced not just one, but several

interrelated test methods — six in the case of illumination! These test

methods, moreover, were to be applied to unoccupied prototype building

assemblies as a part of the research and development effort culminating in a massive one-time procurement. The size of the procurement—$27 million (in

1973 dollars) for Series I, for instance —justified the relatively highprecision measurements that were made and repeated, when necessary, under

closely controlled conditions in prototypes that, in Series II, cost $100,000

(in 1975 dollars) 2, This is a suitable procedure for prototype testing, but

testing in the field under service conditions presents an entirely different

measurement problem for which figure 5.1 offers a more appropriate approach.

NBS/CBT building researchers examined the Peach Book-designated procurementprototype tests of the four performance attributes of interest and, using

their professional judgement, determined which of the prototype methods were suitable for field use. Where none was suitable, then the researchers identified standardized field test methods that could produce approximate measurements of the relevant indicators of performance. In other words, the NBS/CBT

technical specialists identified test methods that were counterparts to an not

replications of the initial prototype tests of the Peach Book.

Where no standard methods none were available, then NBS/CBT proposed developing

new methods, but GSA/PBS determined that to be beyond the scope of the current

1 Monthly Progress Review, September 17, 1982.

O Personal communication from in manager in the joint venture awarded the

Series II procurement.

30
Table 5.2 Building Performance Attributes Selected for NBS Field Measurement

ATTRIBUTE RATIONALE FOR SELECTION FIELD MEASUREMENT METHOD AND BRIEF PROTOCOL*

Acoustics o Cited as critical in previous GSA and GAO 0 Surveyor recorded on check list

evaluationsqualitative Judgments of system

"...acoustics, perhaps more than any other component's utilization and acoustic

attribute, demonstrates the importance of the performance.

interdependence and total integration of the system elements." Daly Case History, p. 99. o Conduct sound level measurements (Aweighted mean levels) at worker's

0 Totally revised between PB : 1 and PB:1R to normal ear-height.

incorporate results of prototype testing of Series I buildings and advances in the o Protocol differs sharply from Peach Book

state-of-the-art; and to accommodate growing test, but is appropriate for about 90% of interest in "open plan" approach to office BSP occupied space and 95% of BSP

design. population

0 Instrument to comply with ANSI SI. 4-1971,

Type 2 standards

Illumination o large factor in office building energy use. 0 Five of six Peach Book lighting tests

are analytic methods based on calcula0 PB:2 revised to 1) substitute background and tion, not directly field measurable as task lighting for uniform illumination;

2) adopt Equivalent Sphere Illumination (ESI)

specified

.

methods for measuring lighting quality; o Only the "Uniformity" requirement is

3) accommodate high-intensity discharge lamps. amenable to the Peach Book - specified

field test, using an illuminance meter.

0 Measure Illuminance level and contrast

rendition to approximate a direct measurement of ESI.

0 Instrument: SH and G Contrast/ESI meter

with reported values noted as "approximate”

0 Adapt method from 1981 IES Lighting

Handbook (Reference Volume) figure 4.23

to measure "staggered row" Installation.

Conditioned Air o Cited as critical in GSA and GAO evaluations: o Air velocities in pilot test were so GSA June 1976 Task Force Report and GAO October low that two different state-of-the-art

1977 Report ( p . 41 )

.

hot wire anemometers failed to stabilize after the prescribed 1 minute.

o PB:2 enlarged scope of HVAC system to incorporate "in system" the 15 feet deep o Instrument method: conform with Air

perimeter zone previously conditioned by the Diffusion Council Equipment Test Code

"out-of-system" building components. 1602 (current version: R4) ANSI/ ASHRAE 55-1981, Thermal Environmental

0 Emergence as factor contributing to Conditions for Human Occupancy

occupational safety and health issue of indoor

air quality.

o Dispute over adequacy of test method and qualifications of testing organizations

(September 1976 GSA fact sheet).

Planning o GSA staff estimates that degree of o Document actual changes by tabulating

flexibility is generally "overspecified". Reimbursable Work Authorizations (RWA's)

in GSA field offices.

o Cost effectiveness of flexibility increasingly

questioned by building researchers Construction 0 Contrast actual change rates with rate Engineering Research Laboratory (Department of of change factors found in table 1, the Army, Corps of Engineers, BOSTI, Buffalo, NY: Peach Book, Third Edition, amendement 1, and the Swedish Building Research Institute). April 1976, p. G5.13.

the Swedish Building Research Institute).

o Supplement documented changes with

o PB:2 differentiates rates of change for each independent recall of building operations

subsystem, treating change probabilistically. staff experience.

o PB:3 revised change rates.

* The methods and protocols are more fully explained in appendix B.

31
(

START )

Figure 5.1 Logic of field assessment

32

BEYOND

SCOPE

OF

CURRENT

PROJECT

BEYOND

SCOPE

OF

CURRENT

PROJECT
project, although suitable for consideration at another point in the NBS/GSA

cooperative building research program. This forced the NBS/CBT specialists to

adapt existing methods — some not yet fully standardized — to the perposes of

the current project. (These methods, both standard and improvised are listed

in the third column of Table 5.1 and discussed in Appendix C.5.

With measurement methods identified, field procedures were developed. These

procedures and methods were to have been applied to both the six BSP building

and a number of counterpart GSA buildings of approximately the same age and

design but built varying the sequential method of conventional construction and

traditional Federal procurement specifications. The results of the two sets of

assessments were to have been compared to further isolate the distinct

differences between the two methods of building procurement but GSA/ PBS also

deferred this aspect of the work to a later time.

Measuring occupied buildings during the workday requires the use of unobtrusive

physical and behavioral measurement methods. To this end, NBS/CBT plans to

perform its measurements using portable and, where possible, handheld instruments and requiring no interruption of normal office and building management

practices. In fact, the closer to normal these practices remain during data

collection, the more representative and accurate will be the assessment. These

field measurements are scheduled for early 1983.
6. ASSESSING THE WIDER EFFECTS OF THE BSP

The Series I and Series II BSP procurements added to the federal office

building stock 1.880 and 1.997 million gross square feet, respectively.

Impressive as these numbers are, however, GSA/BBS' portion of the U.S. con- struction market is, to use Business Week’s term, "minuscule^ . " Nevertheless,

the Peach Book stimulated interest and "spurred intense competition among some giants of the construction industry. Business Week attributed this wider

interest in the BSP procurements to two factors: 1) the scope the performancebased, life cycle cost procurement procedure gave for technological innovation;

and, 2) the belief among some suppliers that innovations pioneered and tested

in the BSP would be transferable to the much larger private sector office

building market. This section of the report describes how those hoped-for

effects will be measured.

6.1 CHARACTERIZING THE INNOVATIVE ELEMENTS OF THE BSP

The BSP introduced two kinds of changes to the federal office building stock:

first, the buildings themselves were to be designed with the users needs as the

primary referent for all performance specifications; second, those performance

specifications were to be realized using procurement procedures that were themselves innovative. In short, the BSP attempted to demonstrate the efficacy of

product and process innovations.

The earlier chapter of this report reviewed the origins of these changes and

described how they were conveyed to prospective bidders via the opening sections of the several Peach Books. A review of the Peach Books and of contemporary accounts in the professional press as well as GSA and GAO documents

revealed the two kinds of innovations listed in table 6.1, process and product.

6.2 MEASURING THE BSP's OUTCOMES

The outcomes , positive and negative, of the BSP were many and varied. Six

buildings were built and have been continually occupied since their completion

and their success in meeting administrative and economic objectives have been

addressed elsewhere, notably by GSA itself and by the General Accounting Office.

In contrast, the present project focuses primarily on measuring the technical

performance of selected building elements under service conditions. Most of

these are relatively straightforward assessments because the Peach Books clearly,

and often quantitatively, expressed the technical performance criteria to be met.

Objective test methods for determining compliance with these criteria can be

identified; they are often in the form of clearly documented voluntary standards. But measuring the larger impacts of the BSP, or any other program demonstrating innovations for possible wider commercial adoption, presents a very

different problem. Methods for measuring these effects are, compared to the

measurement of technical results, still in the developmental stage. This section of the report, therefore, recommends methods that, while necessarily more

tentative, have been widely discussed among evaluation researchers.

1 "All eyes are on the GSA's 'upkeep' contacts", Business Week, June 21, 1976.

34
Table 6.1 Outcomes of BSP Process and Product Innovations

PROCESS INNOVATIONS

Integrated Research and

Design Teams

Life Cycle Costing

Economic Analysis

Speech Privacy Potential

Acoustical Design

Prequalification for

Public Procurement

PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

Integral HVACluminaire-fire

protection package

Structure

HVAC

Electrical Distribution

Luminaires

Finished Floor

Finished Ceiling

Space Dividers

Information

Success*

Application

Success*

Diffusion

Success*

Yes No High Medium Low Signif

.

Some None

Terms defined in section 6.3 of the text.

35
Demonstration projects are often undertaken by the government to reduce

private-and public-sector uncertainties about the benefits and costs to society

of new technologies. And while the BSP was, first and foremost, a building

procurement effort, the great attention paid to BSP outside of government was probably due to the liklihood of participants gaining the competitive advantage

of early access to uncertainty-reducing technical information. The BSP participants assured themselves access to this information in one of two ways

first, the initial GSA procurement was large enough to offset a large part of a firm's cost of developing its own, proprietary knowledge and, second, the

exchange of information required for integrated system design would bring any

participant rapidly to the state-of-the-art knowledge of the other participants.

This was a strong incentive for some, but for others, the cost of entry —

mostly an investment in developmental engineering studies — was simply too high

for the expected return^.

The true test of a building demonstration's value is not solely or even primarily the extent to which the technologies incorporated in the demonstration are subsequently adopted for wider use in the building community. Adoption itself is only one of several conquences of a prior and more valuable

outcome of a technical demonstration; namely, the reduction of uncertainty

surrounding a decision on building technology. Uncertainty may appear in one, or a combination, of several forms: technical uncertainty — asking if the technology is feasible for a particular use; cost uncertainty — what are the requirements in terms of capital investment, operating expense and expense of fabrication and installation; demand uncertainty — what are the benefits accruing and

what value do various segments of the building market place on those benefits;

and, finally, institutional uncertainty of two kinds, internal and external:

internal, meaning within the organization accommodating the new technology (in

the present case, GSA/PBS) and external, meaning among the organizations with

whom GSA/PBS has traditionally dealt (namely, the building community and the

tenant agencies sheltered in the BSP structures).

To the extent that uncertainty is reduced or somehow mitigated, then to that

extent subsequent technical and policy decision are likely to be improved. In some cases, those decisions may favor wider diffusion of the innovative methods;

in other cases, traditional methods may be found superior. But in either

case wiser decisions are more likely to have been reached because they can be

based on documented experience rather than conjecture. Since the BSP's objective included "significant innovations. . .in the management and techniques of

* Important sources are Walter S. Baer, et al., Analysis of Federally Funded

Demonstration Projects: Final Report , prepared by the Rand Corporation for

the Experimental Technology Incentives Program, U.S. Department of Commerce

R-1926-DoC, April 1976; Struening and Guttentag (eds), Handbook of Evaluation

Research ; and Evaluation Review: a Journal of Applied Social Research

(bi-monthly )

O So commented Sheldon Steiner of the New York City engineering firm of

Flack and Kurtz, quoted in Business Week, June 21, 1976.

36
construction" 1 and a "final goal [of] increasing the effectiveness of the

building industry"^ then the broader test — contribution to the reduction of

uncertainty — should be applied first and then, and only then, the conceptually straightforward but practically more difficult task of measuring actual

industry adoption of the innovations pioneered in the BSP.

6.3 THREE TESTS OF BSP's OUTCOME

The BSP was a building procurement, a demonstration undertaken to produce

information to reduce future technical and policy uncertainty, within GSA/PBS,

and, in the words of the PBS Commissioner who directed the last BSP procument,

an act consistent with the "leadership role of PBS in the building industry".

These three roles — procurement, demonstration and leadership — suggest the

three different, but related tests for the success of the BSP that are here

summarized^

Information Success - if, at its completion, uncertainties are no longer

a barrier to decisions about further adoption of a technology, (Note, not whether something should

or or should, not be done, but, rather, is enough

known to make a competent, responsible decision.)

This result can be indicated with a simple "yes"

or "no"

.

Application Success - the extent to which GSA/PBS and its advisors are satisfied with the reliability of the innovative

system and the performance qualities it delivers.

Success here is better measured on a three-part

scale: "high" — if the delivery of specified performance is acceptable and reliable; "medium" —

where specified performance is delivered with

only minor problems; and "low" — where the project

either fails to deliver the specified performance

or serious problems of reliability or quality

occur.

Diffusion Success - measured by the extent to which the technology

(process or product) has, cons equent to the BSP

and not merely subsequent to it, passed into

general use in the corresponding parts of the

building industry or (in the BSP case) to other

building procurement agents of government and

their private sector counterparts. This

* PBS Commissioner's Introduction, PB :3 , not paged.

^ "Goals", PB:3 , p. A-2.

OJ The following definitions are adapted from Baer, et^ ^1 . , Analysis of FederallyFunded Demonstration Projects.

37
variable can be calibrated as "significant

diffusion" — where consequent diffusion beyond

GSA/PBS is self-sustaining; "some diffusion" —

where the BSP technologies have been adopted in a few cases, but the process still needs occasional

stimulation; and "little or no diffusion" — where

further adoption is unlikely without strong and

sustained stimulation.

Direct and exact measurement of BSP outcomes on all three dimensions of

interest —information success, adoption success and diffusion success —is

possible only with an exhaustive description of the state-of-the-art of office

building procurement, (including design and construction) in 1970 before the

BSP and the situation at the end of the decade when the BSP itRelf came to an

end. Neither of these exist, and the measurement problem is compounded

because of the inability to distinquish changes resulting from the BSP itself

and changes in the state-of-the-art of office design and construction because

of other efforts totally unrelated to the BSP. This is a significant consideration since most of the vendors providing building components to meet the

Peach Book specification were also developing products in response to demands

from other parts of the building community. Consequently, statements about

the outcomes of the BSP and its wider impacts must be, for the most part,

approximate and not exact and based on judgments of knowledgeable people

augmented wherever possible by direct, empirical indicators of change.

The systematic solicitation and use of the judgments of experts in evaluating

diff icult-to-specify policies or actions has matured dramatically since

pioneering efforts of the early 1960s 1; methods have improved to the point

that a small industry seems to have grown up based on applications of the

Delphi Method, for instance. A basic requirement for all such studies is

the identification of numbers of knowledgeable but disinterested and impartial

correspondents. But, identifying even a minimum-sized cohort of building

professionals knowledgeable enough to provide informed judgments about the

technologies associated with the BSP cannot be done, it seems at this point,

without calling on the BSP participants themselves and others who were responsible critics or commentators during the BSP's lifetime.

The NBS/CBT assessment of BSP will interview separately a panel of research

correspondents drawn from among these experts. The interview will follow

accepted professional practice to maximize the validity of responses. 2 While

use of a panel of the type indicated may not be the ideal vehicle for a fully

* The state-of-the-art is documented in Harold A. Linstone and Murray Turoff

(eds), The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications , (Reading, MA:

Addison-Wesley , 1975)

Such practices are discussed in Carol H. Weiss, "Interviewing in Evaluation

Research" in Struening and Guttentag (eds), Handbook of Evaluation Research,

Vol . I, pp. 355-396.

38
objective assessment — if one ever were attainable, which is, to say the

least, doubtful — there is at least one moderating factor, the temporal one:

sufficient time might have elapsed -seven years since the publication of the

last edition of the Peach Book, three since occupancy of the last BSP structure

in Norfolk — so that even deeply-involved competitors and adjudicators, vendors

and purchasers participating on the panel may have gained a more even-handed

and tolerant retrospective view of the BSP than might have been expected from

them in the middle of the venture. But an expert panel's tolerance should not

be construed to mean a relaxation of intellectual rigor in reaching judgments.

Rather, the opposite is required: expert panelists must be chosen for their

ability to distinguish between mishaps of execution owing to honest misunderstanding, on the one hand, and misspecif ication of the conceptual approach of

the BSP itself, on the other.

7. CONCLUSION

The BSP was a multi-faceted enterprise, attempting to innovate in areas of

building design, construction management and operations as well as in the

government procedures for procuring all these elements. Consequently, a true

assessment of BSP's effects must employ multiple strategies and methods. This

initial report identifies and explains the several approaches proposed by

NBS/CBT to conduct that assessment.

Knowledgeable professionals will provide expert judgements of the effects of

the BSP in the wider building community. These judgements will be augmented

whenever possible with quantitative indicators of technical change. To gauge

the immediate outcomes of the BSP the NBS reserch team will measure critical

performance attributes in the six "system" buildings now in service. The

results of these judgemental and empirical assessments will be reported at the

conclusion of the assessment project.

39

APPENDIX A - SUMMARY OF METRO WEST PILOT RUN

A.l INTRODUCTION

Prudent practice in engineering and applied social science recommends that

modestly-sized diagnostic explorations should precede a significant and costly

full-scale data collection. Measurement approaches, for instance, should be

pretested in an environment representative of the large universe that ultimately will be evaluated. This is done for both administrative and technical

reasons: research administrators need to know more precisely the time staff and

dollar costs for collecting field data and the research team must assure itself

that essential phenomena are captured in the measurement protocols. For these

reasons, NBS/CBT determined early that the measurement's methods tentatively

selected for use in the BSP assessment be field tested at a BSP site. For reasons of economy, the Social Security Administration (SSA) Metro West Building

in Baltimore, Maryland was the site of the survey pretest.

A. 2 SSA METRO WEST

The SSA Metro West Building intended to serve as a "western gateway to

Baltimore" as well as the workplace for the 4000 SSA employees, is the largest

single building in the BSP, accounting for about one-third of the total occupied area contained in the six BSP buildings and sheltering nearly 40 percent

of the total staff working in BSP structures. (Figures A.l - A. 4 and table

1.1.) While usually large, Metro West is typical in these respects.

o like five of the six BSP structures, Metro West is occupied by a single agency;

o like five of the six, Metro West is preponderantly organized in a "pool" arrangement of workstations;

o like five of the six, clerical processing of written information

is the dominant activity; and

o as in many offices, electronically-energized video displays of

alpha/numeric data are supplanting electro-mechanically produced

"black on white" paper tasks with important environmental

consequences

An NBS research team visited Metro West on November 4, 1982 to familiarize

themselves with the logistics of field measurement in working offices. The NBS

team included Mr. Fred Rudder, an engineer in CBT Acoustics Group; Dr. Sam

Silberstein, biologist in the CBT Thermal Measurement Group; Dr. Francis T.

Ventre, senior research architect of the CBT Office of Construction Programs

(team leader); and Dr. Robert W. Marans , Director of the Urban Environmental

Research Program of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center (a

consultant to NBS with a national reputation in post-occupancy evaluations of

completed buildings). Mr. Ted Hattenburg, a physicist in the CBT Illumination

Engineering Group, contributed to the team's effort but did not travel to Metro
Figure

A.1

Architectural

rendering

of

Metro

West

(view

from

the

East).
N

u

FRANKLIN STKfcLT

:ii7.0: TTm;

JTZJVTT

-M

-4- \V_

SARATOGA STREET

.a

£

n

‘Oifl

LEXINGTON STREET

ZZ3D0D

Figure A. 2 Location of Metro West

A3

EUTAW

STREET
A

Figure

A.3

Section

through

Metro

West
V

Figure A. 4 Metro West column, core, and entrance plan

A5

GREENE

ST
West. Each member of the team had previously reviewed Peach Book:2, the specification to which Metro West was designed and built and each was equipped to

make needed measurements. These procedures are documented in appendix C.

Resident GSA Building manager, John White, distributed a 63 page "Building Data

and Information Guide," and oriented the team to the building, its uses and

occupants and important design and construction features. The feature introducing the greatest difficulty to operations is the in-system/out-of-system

"interface" but even these difficulties did not affect the activities sheltered

directly except for the floors immediately over the open-air parking decks.

(Mr. White reported that these floors were not sufficiently insulated from the

cold and, consequently, these offices are uncomfortable during the heating

season).

Of the purely "in-system" segments of the building — five floors in the south

block, four floors in the north block, and eight floors in a tower occupying

one-fifth of the area of the north block — contain no localized problems.

These 15 portions accounted for 40 percent of Metro West's $78,631,833.00

estimated cost (coinciding exactly with the BSP's target split). Moreover, the

in-systems portion accounted for less than its share (only 34 percent) of the

project's $12,805,378.00 in change order costs*.

A. 3 MEASUREMENTS OF THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

The NBS team measured illuminance (in "raw" footcandles ) , ambient noise (in Aweighted decibels), and air motion (in meters/second) from 15 to 19 locations

at several scattered points in the building. No measurement of "flexibility"

of interior space dimension or services was attempted. Each of these measurement's methods is described in appendix B. Descriptive statistical analyses

(measures of central tendency and coefficients of variability) were completed,

revealing good agreement with the Peach Book: 2 values. The principal purpose

of the pilot study is to evaluate the feasibility, utility, and logistics of

measurement methods, however, and not the data itself. This pilot indicates

that most measures could be successfully applied in field settings with minimal

disruption of the office workflow. Logistically , three team members made 10

illuminance readings, 5 sound level readings, and 10 air-movement readings at 5 scattered sites in 15 minutes; the next 8 locations were measured in 24 minutes.

This rate was possible because the fourth team member recorded all readings,

freeing the readers to concentrate on their meters. An advantage expediting

data collection that may be unique to Metro West is that all interior columns

there are clearly numbered so that measurement locations could be readily

documented.

* Financial data from GSA/PBS Office of Design and Construction, Design

Management Division, Post Occupancy Evaluation: SSA Metro West (PCD 82-

74011 ) , p. 15. This evaluation was based on the observations of a visiting

GSA/PBS team and on the interviews with agency principals. No physical nor perceptual behavioral measures of either the environment or its occupants were reported. The evaluation reports illustrations, however, were

informative.

A-6
A. 4 FORTUITOUS FINDINGS

A useful tertiary purpose for pilot testing — in addition to the logistical

and technical reasons cited earlier — is the discovery of unanticipated

phenomena. This happened at Metro West and influenced subsequent research

planning. The team members observed and noted to one another various practices

in the occupying agency's management of, or the worker's use of, their immediate, local enviornments. These practices ran counter to the intent of the

Peach Book specification that guided the initial in-system designs of the

typical floors at Metro West. Agency managers appeared to have converted the

movable, head-high acoustical screens into either conventional space dividers

or baffles for blocking visual access between management suites and the workforce at large. On other floors, the head-high acoustical panels were placed

before west facing windows with otherwise unobstructive vistas extending for

miles. In both cases, and in many other cases throughout Metro West, building

occupants had vitiated the Peach Book's intricate acoustical performance criteria by not deploying the screens as components of an acoustical conditioning

design. That is, rather than using the screens to isolate noisy equipment or

to subdivide vast open offices into smaller, more familiar room-sized compartments, the "line of sight" supervisory philosophy of the agency took precedence.

Fortunately, despite this "misuse" of an expressly designed component of an intricate acoustical system (which included absorption in the ceiling and

floors, as well as the screen, and augmented by a background white noise

generator), the office floors at Metro West remained, acoustically speaking,

serviceable.

This finding leads to one of two possible conclusions: either the Peach Book:

2

acoustical criteria were too demanding, resulting in wasteful redundancy of

acoustical absorption in the BSP spaces, or, and this is equally plausible,

such redundancy is advantageous in that BSP spaces remain serviceable even after occupants manipulate important components to meet purposes or needs the

building designers might not have anticipated. Further consideration of this

subject, which reaches to the heart of design philosophy, is beyond the scope

of the present project and is now ended.

A. 5 CONCLUSIONS

The November 4, 1982 pilot test at Metro West established the feasibility of

measuring a variety of physical phenomena with a minimum description of the

office workflow. The great size of Metro West and the fact that the GSA/PBS

stock of office buidings contain many large structures made spatial sampling

the most efficient and scientifically defensible approach to describing the

performance of the BSP inventory. Finally, the number and variety of gross

occupant adjustments to the intricately designed building systems suggested

that numerous robust and even approximate measurements would better serve the

ISP assessment than a smaller number of meticulously exact and, therefore,

costly measurements.

A7

APPENDIX B - TECHNICAL COMMENT ON MEASUREMENT METHODS

B.l REPRESENTING THE BSP STOCK

B.1.1 Why Sampling?

The post-occupancy evaluations of buildings that GSA/PBS has conducted or for

which it has contracted have not, heretofore, addressed problems of spatial

sampling. Sampling is necessary now, however, because the six buildings built

under the BSP are relatively large, so large that the 100 percent sampling

methods used by NBS on such buildings as the Norris Cotton Federal Office

Building in Manchester, NH^ or the Richard H. Poff Courthouse and Federal

Building Roanoke, VA^ would be unworkable given the resources available. The

six BSP buildings listed in table 1.1 range in size from the 1.3 million gross

square feet at Metro West in Baltimore to the .25 million gross square feet in

Norfolk Federal Building. (In contrast, the Manchester and Roanoke buildings

combined are only slightly larger than the Norfolk building.)

With structures so large, spatial sampling methods are more economical. In

order for the sampling results to be credible, however, these sampling methods

must incorporate established statistical engineering practices. Spatial

sampling is a relatively unexplored area for the combination of building

performance attributes with which the BSP assessment is concerned, namely;

acoustics, illumination, air movement, and flexibility of interior space

division. Consequently, NBS/CBT professional staff directed its attention to an exploration and selective use of statistical sampling and spatial analysis.

This effort is justified because at the conclusion of the current effort,

GSA/PBS will have for its use, or for the use of its future contractors, an approach to constructing reliable and credible spatial samples from its building

stock. This technique should prove especially helpful to GSA because GSA/PBS

deals frequently with very large buildings: a mere 9 percent (200 buildings)

of GSA/PBS* s total number of structures account for half of the building space

it owns and operates. GSA staff analysts, using these new techniques, may then

more confidently generalize finding from small samples to larger universes.

B.2 APPROACHES TO SAMPLING

All descriptions of environments, indeed, all perceptions are selective.

Humans could not function in this welter of sense-data without making

1 Jacqueline Elder and Robert L. Tibbott, "User Acceptance of An Energy

Efficient Office Building — A Study of the Norris Cotton Federal Office

Building, Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, Washington,

DC, BSS 130, January 1981.

2 Jacqueline Elder, George E. Turner, and Arthur I. Rubin, "Post Occupancy

Evaluation: A Case Study of the Evaluation Process, Department of Commerce,

National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC, NBSIR 79-1780, July 1979.

This carried an evaluation of the Richard H. Poff Courthouse and Federal

Building in Roanoke, VA, completed in December 1975.

B-l
selections, attending to some cues while ignoring others. The same principal

applies to technical surveys of buildings. The NBS/CBT technical surveys of

the BSP buildings selected, with GSA/PBS concurrence, four building attributes

for documentation and assessment. But even within this limitation, further

refinement is required to assure that a relatively small number of measurements

made (small only when compared to the infinity of possible measurement locations in, say, a 500,000 gross square foot structure) can be generalized into a reliable description of an entire building. Description is the operative word

here, for if GSA/PBS were seeking to explore or define in a tentative way some building issues or NBS/CBT were seeking to explore some building phenomena,

then representative, reliable decriptions would not be needed. But descriptive

surveys relying on relatively small numbers of measurements usually require

statistical sampling methods in which the probability of a certain building

element being included in the measured sample must be known in advance of the

actual measurement, indeed, before one chooses the exact site for a measurement.

Otherwise, universal generalizations from the specific sites would be skewed

to over — represent conditions local to those specific sites.

Some guidance exists for where and with what frequency building characterizing

measurements shall be made. One widely used method is that recommended by

ASHRAE for the "evaluation of thermal parameters 1

. " Table 5 of

ASHRAE 55 recommends that thermal conditions (including air movement, the

thermal attribute of interest in the current assessment) be measured in office

buildings as follows:

"In each zone of a typical floor; at

the center of and 60 cm (2.0 ft) from

each side of the control zone and at

the center of the space in each zone."

Each of the other environmental design specialities (lighting, acoustics, etc.)

issue similar instructions, which are condensed in section 2 of this appendix.

But two large problems remain: no single method is offered for the general

question of spatial sampling to represent the joint effect of all attributes

over the entire building nor has a technical consensus been established for the

minimum number of measurement locations required. Here GSA/PBS and NBS/CBT are breaking a new methodological path. These challenges are compounded by the GSA

and NBS commitment to complete building measurements with minimal Interference

with the office practice at the six BSP sites. With this commitment is the

implication of portable and preferably, hand-held instrumentation.

B.3 FACTORIAL EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

The In-System interiors of the six BSP buildings are to be assessed by

comparing the performance specified in the Peach Books with that delivered

at the time the buildings are measured. Although the Peach Books attempts to

create a uniform both planned and unanticipated environment, variations in the

building's siting, construction, and use occur. These variations can neither

* ANSI/ASHRAE 55-1981: Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy.

B-2
dominate any subsequent assessment nor can they be Ignored. Researchers use sampling methods to control for these variations systematically. The method

used in the present project is to "stratify" each building in the BSP building

universe into a small number of recognizable subgroups differentiated along

dimensions significant to the measurement of building performance and then,

from each of all possible or plausible combinations of strata, to randomly

select one, or preferably two, measurement points 1. At each point so chosen,

the NBS team will measure and record for each parameter extreme values of that

parameter (maximum and minimum) , some measure of central tendency (usually an arithmetic mean) and some coefficient of variation to indicate the precision of

the measurement indicating the closeness of successive measurements of a single

magnitude by repeated applications of the same measurement process 2.

Table B.l lists important subgroups of the BSP to be reflected in the sampling.

An NBS resarch team nominated these subgroups after a preliminary visit to the

SSA Metro West Building described in appendix A. All possible combinations

that can be formed among the different levels or subdivisions of the factors

quickly becomes a very large number. Consequently, a fractional factorial

design is recommended.

Finally, an external device is needed to randomize the selection of the one or two measurement site per station. This is to reduce the likelihood of the

surveyor's unintentionally seeking one part of a building from which to take

measurements, thus, giving an unrepresentative and inaccurate description of

the building under analysis. For instance, a surveyor might unwittingly favor

locations adjacent to the building's circulation systems to save time or to

choose unoccupied desks further to reduce intrusions into the workplace routine. Systematic error, or bias is, thus, introduced because it is the sur- veyor's selective perception of the building that will be measured and not the

building itself; consider that only a small fraction of the possible measurement sites are adjacent to the circulation system and that the desk may be

unoccupied because a temporary malfunction of the building subsystems (say a malfunctioning air handler) might have made the space uncomfortable. Now it

is an entirely different matter if random selection of measurement sites

continue to turn up such uncomfortable thus unoccupiable spaces. For these

reasons, NBS will follow recommended statistical engineering practices in the

BSP assessment. The extended devise used will be a table of random numbers.

B.4 SELECTION IN THE FIELD

The NBS surveyor will ascertain from the building manager the number of

In-System floors and the nominal structural bays known to contain each of the

office arrangements listed in table B.l.d. Using scale drawings similar to

1 Mary G. Natrella, Experimental Statistics , Handbook 91, U.S. Department of

Commerce, 1962, Chapter 11.4.

2 This discussion is drawn from Churchill Eisenhart, "Expression of the

Uncertainties of Final Results," Science, Vol. 160, June 14, 1968, pp.

1201-1204.

B-3
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B.l

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those in figure A. 4, the surveyor will assign a unique number to every nominal

bay and, by drawing from a table of random numbers, select the locations for

measurement. Then, and only then, will the surveyor accompanied by the

building manager (or representative) make an orientation tour of the entire

structure.

B. 5 PHYSICAL MEASUREMENTS

This section specifies field methods and protocols for measuring the in-service

performance of selected attributes of the BSP building. The attributes are acoustics, illumination, conditioned air, and "planning", the Peach Book's

designation for flexibility of the interior space dimension system. Table 5.2

provides the rationale GSA/PBS and NBS/CBT used in making this selection and

the methods used. The present section may be considered an expansion of table

5.2 in the direction of identifying where field measurement could be improved

to facilitate future building evaluations.

B.5.1 Illumination

Peach Book:2, the basis of the Metro West and applicable to over half of the

BSP space, stipulated six illumination requirements, each with its own test

method. Requirement 4, Uniformity, is the only one of the six requirements,

however, amenable to a practicable field measurement method providing a direct

or approximate comparison of the in-service performance of the luminaire

subsystem with the Peach Book's comprehensive illumination requirements. The

remaining five illumination requirements each stipulate a calculation procedure

as the test method and these analytic methods cannot, by their very nature, be

subjected to field measurement.

But future lighting criteria will likely include combined measures of

illuminance level and contrast rendition^. While no fully-agreed procedure or target task exists, measurement instruments are available in the U.S. and

Sweden for making combined measurements^. These instruments are not intended

for exact photometry, but they are reported to produce results with accuracy

and precision suitable for engineering practice and will be used in the BSP

assessment. The SH and G Contrast/ESI meter cited table 5.2 is the instrument

chosen.

The Equivalent Sphere Illumination (ESI) method upon which was based the

GSA/PBS Peach Book illumination subsystem performance specification is not

1 Gary T. Yonemura, "Criteria for Recommending Lighting Levels," Lighting

Research and Technology , 13:3, 1981, pp. 113-129.

2 I. Goodbar, "The Application of the ESI System to Office Lighting",

Lighting Design and Application (November 1982), p. 29 ff.

B-5
without its critics The criticisms address both the conceptual basis of

ESI and the practical difficulties of executing large numbers of calculations

determining ESI ratings of proposed lighting systems. Use of the ESI methods

in the present assessment neither expresses nor implies their endorsement by

NBS. Rather, the methods are used because they were specifically cited in

Peach Book’s second and third editions and because no single substitute field

evaluation method has, as yet, been widely accepted by the lighting community.

B.5.2 Acoustics

Peach Book: 2 sought to achieve an appropriate acoustical environment by

stimulating the development of seven building system components (figure 2.2)

which, although primarily intended for other purposes such as illumination or thermal comfort, would nevertheless, be evaluated for acoustical performance,

as well, by being assessed for inclusion in the BSP. GSA/PBS evaluation

methods required verification of system component performance as tested either

in the laboratory with each component being labelled or component field

measurements with certification of performance. The specified field measurements f ocus upon verification of specific performance attributes and require

extensive set-up conditions and data reduction. Further, these tests must be

conducted in the absence of normal office-generated noise^. As a result, field

measurements are not suitable for conducting building-wide noise sampling to

document the workplace environment as required in the current project since

they are predicated upon conditions other than those prevailing during normal

building occupancy.

The recommended acoustics measurement protocol involves a two-step process to

be performed at each work station selected for sampling. The first step

involves completion of a check list documenting the physical conditions prevailing at each work station. The second step involves measurement of the

sound level at each work station. The objective of this protocol will yield

qualitative data regarding system performance and qualitative data on the

prevailing work station sound level. Because of its simplicity, these data

are attainable on a building-wide basis during normal working hours. Further,

the protocol should not interfere with the worker’s normal routine.

B.5.3 Conditioned Air (Movement)

All editions of the Peach Book specified upper and lower limits air movement

occupied zones of 0.25 and 0.10 m/s (50 and 20 ft/min). The specification

* The Illuminating Engineering Society's views on the uses of ESI are set

forth in the IES Lighting Handbook , Reference Volume (New York: IESNA, 1981),

pp. 9-60 - 9-/1. For a more skeptical view, see J. A. Lynes, "Lighting

Design at the Crossroads,” Building Services (U.K.), April 1982, p. 53.

2 These tests are documented in, Test Methods for Direct-Measurement of Speech

Privacy Potential Based on Subjective Judgements (PBS.C1) and Test Methods

for the Sufficient Verification of Speech Privacy Potential Based on Objective Measurements Including Methods for the Rating of Functional Interzone

Attenuation and NC Backgrounds (PBS C.2), Washington, DC, GSA/PBS, May 1975.

B-6
is ambiguous, however, about whether throw-terminal or area-factor velocity

measurements are required. Furthermore, the Air Diffusion Council Equipment

Test Code, the standard referenced in Peach Book:2, is similarly unclear. The

ambiguity was resolved only after two GSA staff members involved in the initial

drafting of the Peach Book were consulted and determined that throw-velocity

is the required quantity.

As is pointed out in table 5.2, state-of-the art hot-wire anemometry cannot

reliably measure velocities as low as the Peach Book's lower limits, making a definitive determination of the completed BSP building's compliance problematical.

Metro West measurements were nowhere near the specified upper limit, either.

This inability to reliably measure may be a reason that ASHRAE Standard 55-

1981, Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human Occupancy, prescribes no minimum

velocity; ASHRAE cites the same upper limit as does the Peach Book (50 ft/min

or 0.10 m/s). Unless a rationale for maintaining the lower limit is available,

GSA/PBS might consider eliminating the lower limit, bringing the Peach Book

into conformance with the prevailing standard in the building industry, ASHRAE

55. This elimination might be difficult, however, for air movement has been

an object of contention in previous BSP evaluations.

B.5.4 Planning (Flexibility of Interior Space Division)

The Peach Book sought to extend the federal office building's service life by

specifying high-performance interior space division systems. These systems

afforded GSA building managers the ability to reconfigure interior space to

better serve the inevitably changing purposes of the tenant agencies. Building

flexibility is an amorphous term: it can mean relocatability of functions, or their expandibility . During the BSP, flexibility was understood to mean the re- arrangement or re-subdivision of the large and undifferentiated volume of the

typical office floors erected in the program. The need for subdivision is

obvious when one considers that, except for Peach Book:l, GSA/PBS imposed no upper limit on the size of office floors. (Peach Book: 3 did away with lower

limits as well, allowing designers much greater freedom.)

Although flexible, reconf igurable subdivisions of larger architectural volumes

have been an element of design thought since at least 1849, it became significant after 1890 when steel and reinforced concrete frame construction became

reliable and economical 1, there is scant reliable empirical evidence of the

extent to which such built-in flexibility is actually exported after initial

occupancy, and at what cost.

2

1 Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture: 1750-1950 (Montreal,

McGill University Press, 1967), p. 234.

2 One published economic study was found in the author's personal collection:

John C. Hamilton, "Functional Life as a Basis for Design" Industrialization

Forum, Vol. 6, no. 3-4 (1975), pp. 71-82. A Computer search of The

Engineering Index from 1970 to November 1982 revealed no others.

B-7
t

Table B. 5.4.1 Rate of Change and Area of Change Factors for Planned Change of

BSP Interiors*

SUBSYSTEM

ANNUAL RATE

OF CHANGE

AREA PER

1000 SQ. FT.

PB:2 PB : 3 PB:3

Structure (sprinkler) 0.035 0.035 25%

HVAC 0.035 0.035 25%

Electrical Distribution

Office Power 0.11 1.2 85%

Telephone 0.18 1.32 85%

Signal 0.15 0.375 85%

Luminaire Switching 0.035 0.035 25%

Luminaires 0.03 0.03 100%

Finished Floor 0.10 0.10 85%

Finished Ceiling 0.10 included with other subsystems

Space Dividers

Partitions 0.07 0.07 25%

Screens 0.02 0.15 75%

* Peach Book:l specified planned change in a manner incommensurate with the

specifications in the later two editions.

B-8
The current assessment will compare the areas and rates of change actually

experienced in the six BSP buildings with the areas and rates listed in Peach

Book:2, Appendix B (Planning Change); table 1, Amendment 8 (September 1975), p.

12 and Peach Book:3, Appendix G (Planning Charge), table 1, Amendment 1 (April

1976). The "rate of change" in both cases (none were specified in Peach Book:l)

are defined as the "estimated annual rate of planning change by subsystem

within the Typical Office Space". The "Area of Change" is an "estimate of the

percentage of Typical Office Space in which a subsystem will be installed or subject to change." Areas and rates are listed in table C. 5.4.1.

Scientists and scholars have long used archival records, often originated for

administrative purposes, as a source of research data. 3 This practice has many

advantages: the data is "clean", in that the producer does not know it will be

used for research, and it is relatively inexpensive. But there are difficulties,

too, namely: "selective deposit and selective survival" ^ — not every event is

recorded correctly and not all records are retained. Hamilton, who used

administrative records at two Army Installations to measure the frequency and

extend of building conversions and alterations, noted that since Department of

Defense level authorization is needed for conversions, "many such jobs are labelled diversions (where it is planned that the building will resort to its

original use) and go unreported"! „ This is an example of selective deposit in

the archival record and an instance of what might be encountered in examining

the Reimburseable Work Authorizations in the GSA/PBS field offices. In fact, one resident GSA building manager remarked that, in times of budget stringency

in which funds for facility improvements are either deferred or foregone

completely, tenant agencies might request space modifications within broader

accounting categories not similarly curtailed, making it difficult for

analysts to trace which specific building subsystems were altered at any given

time.

Such risks of error or bias must, at least, be recognized at the outset and,

to the extent possible, controlled for by the use of additional multiple

measurements in the buildings and by speaking directly with the building

managers

.

1 Many such practices are described in Eugene J. Webb, et_. al . , Unobtrusive

Measures : Non-reactive Research in the Social Sciences (Chicago: Rand

McNally, 1966) . Particularly Chapters 3 and 4.

2 Webb, e_t. al . , p. 54.

^ Hamilton, p. 77.

B-9
B . 6 PERCEPTUAL/ BEHAVIORAL MEASUREMENTS 1

One of the driving forces energizing the BSP was a commitment to spur

technological innovation in meeting the user needs of the federal office workforce. The early editions of the Peach Book argued that since over 90 percent

of the costs of doing business in office buildings over its 40 year economic

life was assignable to the wages and salaries of these employer therein, then

the merest enhancement of their productivity that might result from a more satisfactory useroriented environment would dwarf the 2 percent of total costs

(over the 40 year life) assigned to designing and building the structure. 2 Clearly, then, the user mattered. What means are available for measuring the

extent to which the BSP successfully addressed these user needs. Obviously,

more than one method is needed but the six BSP buidings as they are perceived

both by the federal office worker for whom they were intended and by the

manager who operates the buildings for the occupant's benefit.

NBS staff will carry out these latter assessements by surveying the occupants

of the structural bays identified in the spatially-distributed random sample

described in C.4. These occupants will be asked to take 15 to 20 minutes to

complete a questionnaire about the physical environment of their work stations.

No one will see the completed questionnaire except members of the research

team, and the results will be tabulated in a statistical form for the building

as a whole. While individuals completing the questionnaire will be identified

by name, the research team must know approximately where in the building the

responding occupant works so that the environmental conditions (lighting, noise

levels, etc.) can be measured objectively and compared with the occupant's

subjective descriptions. Therefore, each questionnaire will carry an identification number corresponding to a location in the building.

The questionnaire will record user perceptions and action as they relate to the

four Peach Book performance attributes identified earlier as being particularly

salient in the occupant's immediate work environment. This is reiterated

because the current project arises not to "evaluate a building" but, rather to assess the effective delivery of selected building attributes after several

years of service.

* GSA/PBS has determined that the work described in this section should be

rescheduled, in conformance with revised program objectives within GSA as a whole, to later in the GSA/NBS research program. Consequently, the discussion concentrates on the concepted approach to measuring occupant perceptions

and actions.

2 This argument appears early in section B of Peach Book:l, 1R; and 2. It does

not appear in the less hortatory Peach Book: 3.

B-10
Many elements in the questionnaire will replicate those used in earlier NBS and

GSA collaborations on building evaluations! and on the Steelcase-sponsored

national study of office workers conducted by the Louis Harris organization.

This will be done so that the response of workers sheltered in BSP buildings

can be compared with response in those other office environments. Of course,

for some highly important issues — as determined jointly by GSA and NBS —

more than a single question will be asked. This is done to assure internal

consistency within a single occupant's response.

Once the physical environmental and occupant response data are in hand, the

analysis will focus on comparisons between responses of users from buildings

built under the three sets of Peach Book performance criteria. Additionally,

comparisons of responses from buildings within the same series will be made.

NBS analysts will also examine relationships between actual physical conditions

as measured in the field and people's responses to these conditions. Univariate distributions will be prepared for all variables and, where appropriate,

summary statistics including means and standard deviations will be calculated.

Whenever possible, indices representing composite measures of people responses

to a particular environmental attribute (e.g., illumination, noise) will be

used. NBS will also perform a number of bivariate and mulitvariate analyses

as an exploration into unsuspected regularities in a building's physical performance and the user perceptions and actions that performance induces. All

this information can be useful to GSA/PBS in the planning, design, management,

and operations of existing and proposed federal buildings.

! Notable examples include Robert W. Marans and Kent F. Sprekelmeyer , Evaluating

Built Environments: A Behavioral Approach , (Ann Arbor, MI: University of

Michigan Institute for Social Research, 1981). This book reported an evaluation of the Ann Arbor Federal Building first occupied in 1977. See

also Elder and Tibbott and Elder, Turner and Rubin cited earlier.

B-ll
NBS-114A (REV. 2.80

U.». DEPT. OF COMM.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA

SHEET (See Instructions)

1. PUBLICATION OR

REPORT NO.

NBSIR 83-2662

2; Performing Orfan. Report No 3. Publication Date February 1983

4.

TITLE AND SUBTITLE

Documentation and Assessment of the GSA/PBS Building Systems Program:

Background and Research Plan

5.

AUTHOR(S)

Francis T. Ventre

6.

PERFORMING ORGANIZATION (If Joint or other than NBS, see Instructions)

NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20234

7. Contract/Grant No.

I. Type of Report & Period Covered

9.

SPONSORING ORGANIZATION NAME AND COMPLETE ADDRESS (Street. City, State, ZIP)

Public Buildings Service

General Services Administration

Washington, DC 20405

10.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

Document describes a computer program; SF-185, FIPS Software Summary, Is attached.

11.

ABSTRACT (A 200-word or less factual summary of most significant Information. If document Includes a significant

bibliography or literature survey, mention it here)

This report documents the origins and conduct of the General Services

Administration/Public Buildings Service (GSA/PBS) Building Systems Program (BSP)

undertaken during the 1970s and recommends a research plan for assessing

the effectiveness of the BSP. The report proposes specific methods for

assessing two outcomes of the BSP: the delivery of specified levels of

performance for four attributes in the six buildings completed under the BSP

and the wider effects of the BSP on the building community.

12. KEY WORDS (Six to twelve entries; alphabetical order; capitalize only proper names; ana separate key words by semicolons)

Building measurement; building systems; Federal buildings; field assessment;

office buildings; performance specification; post-occupancy evaluation; procurement;

technical innovation

13. AVAILABILITY

r~y] Unlimited

| | For Official Distribution. Do Not Release to NTIS

| | Order From Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.

[X] Order From National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Springfield, VA. 22161

14. NO. OF

PRINTED PAGES

67

15. Price

$ 10.00

U S COMM'DC S043-P80

1I