SEDL / STP / STP1029-EB / STP18947S

Matching Building Performance to Organizational Needs

Sims, WR
professors of facility planning and management, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Becker, FD
professors of facility planning and management, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Pages: 22    Published: Jan 1990

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Abstract

A standard practice for measuring the office building requirements of organizations and the performance of buildings in meeting those requirements (ORBIT-2) is described. Using this method four alternative strategies for meeting an organizations building needs, current and future, are examined. These strategies include maximizing building performance, striking an average, maximizing a few demands stereotypically associated with an organization type, and carefully matching the building performance profile to the needs profile of a particular organization. Building requirements for five very different organizations are also compared against the performance of a representative sample of 20 North American office buildings using the ORBIT-2 process.

There is no such thing as a universally ideal building — “one size does not fit all”. A building can fail to meet organizational needs by overperformance thus wasting resources through unneeded and unused capacity, or by underperforming which negatively affects organizational effectiveness.