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Significant gaps between end-user expectations and the actual performance of buildings have been reported. Engaging end-users in the design phase is proposed to address this issue; however, practical implementation faces numerous challenges due to limited details of methods, tools and techniques for effective user engagement. This study aims to critically analyse the challenges in end-user engagement in the design process, thereby proposing a new, enhanced framework for end-user engaged building design.

A systematic literature review was conducted, involving a comprehensive search across Scopus, ScienceDirect, Web of Science and Google Scholar, yielding 481 articles. After eliminating duplicates and irrelevant studies, this pool was narrowed down to 31. Meta-synthesis of the existing body of knowledge and its extrapolation were performed.

Three design approaches – participatory, user-centred and co-design exist to facilitate user engagement during the design process, aiming to mitigate performance gaps. However, they encounter significant challenges, including a lack of standardised processes for identifying the right users, acquiring and reconciling end-user requirements and evaluating designs. A new framework for enhanced end-user engagement in the design phase is proposed to address these challenges.

The proposed framework would enhance user engagement in building design, consequently mitigating performance gaps and bolstering occupant productivity and satisfaction. Additionally, the study identifies the challenges associated with the user-engagement process and consolidating user feedback, which is often vague and ambiguous by nature. Addressing these challenges is identified as future research needs to yield better outcomes from end-user engagement.

Many buildings fail to meet user expectations, causing a performance gap. Pre-occupancy evaluation (PrOE) is believed to have the potential to close the gap. It enables designers to obtain end-user feedback in the design phase and improve the design for better performance. However, PrOE implementation faces challenges due to still maturing knowledgebase. This study aims to understand the state-of-the-art knowledge of PrOE, thereby identifying future research needs to advance the domain.

A systematic literature review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) framework was conducted. A thorough search in five databases and Google Scholar retrieved 90 articles, with 30 selected for systematic review after eliminating duplicates and irrelevant articles. Bibliometric analyses were performed using VOSviewer and Biblioshiny on the article metadata, and thematic analyses were conducted on their contents.

PrOE is a vehicle for engaging building end-users in the design phase to address the credibility gap caused by the discrepancies between the expected and actual performance of buildings. PrOE has gained limited applications in healthcare, residential, office and educational building design for two broad purposes: design management and marketing. Using virtual reality technologies for PrOE has demonstrated significant benefits. Yet, the PrOE domain needs to mature in multiple perspectives to serve its intended purpose effectively.

This study identifies four knowledge gaps for future research to advance the PrOE domain: (1) developing a holistic PrOE framework, integrating comprehensive performance evaluation criteria, useable at different stages of the design phase and multi-criteria decision algorithms, (2) developing a mixed reality tool, embodying the holistic PrOE framework, (3) formulating a PrOE framework for adaptive reuse of buildings and (4) managing uncertainties in user requirements during the lifecycle in PrOE decisions.

Health-care (HC) is one of the most polluting industries and recognised as the second energy-intensive sector, emitting 8 per cent out of total 40 per cent of total carbon emissions. Integrating sustainability to facilities management operations is imperative and could significantly contribute to reducing energy consumption, waste and day-to-day operational costs of buildings. The integration of sustainability into FM practices depends on factors such as facility type, organisational scale, business sector and organisation characteristics. This paper aims to explore the SFM practice with a specific focus on HC-specific FM services and respective sustainable practice that could be integrated into FM operations.

A Delphi survey was administered to ten experts in two rounds, who are specialised in FM and sustainable practices in the HC sector. Data gathered from the survey were analysed using the Relative Importance Index to identify the most significant FM services and sustainable practices.

The study found 9 significant FM services and 49 sustainable in HC. The top three significant FM services include “building services (BS)”, “space planning (SP)” and “quality management (QM)”. Further, “identifying applications for energy-saving measures” and “ensure onsite, off-site storage and transport of wastes” were found as the topmost significant sustainable practices. The relevancy of these identified sustainable practices to the principles of sustainability was determined. The results showed that 22, 18 and 09 sustainable practices were relevant to environmental, social and economic principles of sustainability, respectively.

There is a dearth of literature that integrates sustainable FM practices in HC sector, and this study fulfills this research gap. The study is novel in offering a framework to integrate sustainability into FM practice in HC sector.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how well the facilities are performing in order to support the organizational goals and user requirement it is very vital to conduct regular building evaluations which necessitates the important usage of building performance evaluation (BPE) where it provides the current status quo of building. Presently, there are various BPE approaches developed around the world, and as evidenced there are no in-depth studies on BPE in tropical countries to evaluate the building performance (BP). However, adapting these approaches might not necessarily be applicable in the context of tropical countries due to geographical, climatic, cultural and other differences. This has been identified as the gap in this research and aimed to formulate a holistic total building performance evaluation (TBPE) scoring framework, for the assessment of performance of buildings.

The study was quantitative in nature. First, a comprehensive literature survey was carried out. This was followed by an expert survey to sieve out the most significant BP factors identified in the literature survey. With that detailed questioner survey was carried out proposing a TBPE scoring framework

A TBPE scoring framework was proposed with a total of 265 points to evaluate buildings compromising of seven criteria and 57 dimensions in which energy management, reachability, occupational hygiene, thermal, etc. had higher contribution in evaluating building.

Identification of measurement units and parameters for BP dimensions are expected to be conducted in order to distribute the scoring evenly. Continuous studies are also necessary since the expectations of building performance dimensions changing all the time.

This paper readdresses the need of evaluating the buildings and suggesting the paradigm to evaluate the buildings in an objective manner.