Develop Occupant Feedback Methods for Diagnostic Systems

Goal Statement:
To incorporate occupant feedback into building system diagnostics so that the efficiency and effectiveness of building operations can be improved.

Results:

The occupant feedback system that we designed has two major software components:

Tenant Interface for Energy and Maintenance Systems (TIEMS)
The user interface is designed for occupants (tenants) of commercial buildings. Our hypothesis is that allowing tenants access to information from energy and maintenance systems as well as some control over these systems will improve energy and maintenance performance. We interviewed potential users and reviewed existing energy and maintenance databases and found that the most important feature to occupants is the ability to track service requests. In response to the interviews, we included in our interface several features that should improve occupant satisfaction with maintenance and operations and simultaneously improve operational efficiency.

Last year we obtained Government Services Administration (GSA) approval to integrate TIEMS into the GSA Energy and Maintenance Network (GEMNet) that is being developed. Field trials of the occupant feedback systems have been proceeding since October 2002, involving three key users from different agencies that occupy two GEMNet connected buildings. The initial results have shown that TIEMS can reduce the labor required to answer phone requests and that the interface increases occupant satisfaction with maintenance performance. So far, there is no evidence that TIEMS has caused an increase in the number of service requests. Testing and improvements are still under way; final results are expected during the summer of 2003.

Maintenance and Operations Recommender (MORE)
MORE uses information from Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMSs) and Energy Management and Control Systems (EMCSs) to recommend responses that maintenance personnel should make to maintenance service requests or other events that require a maintenance or control system action. The recommender integrates text information from a CMMS database and sensor information from an EMCS to prioritize maintenance and operations recommendations.

Downloads and Links:

• "Tenant Interface for Energy and Maintenance Systems (TIEMS)" Brochure (667 KB, 2 pp)
   
• "Design of an EMCS/CMMS User Interface for Building Occupants", Federspiel, C. C. and L. Villafana, ASHRAE Summer 2003 Transactions, 113(2) (2.19 MB, 19 pp)
   
• "A Tenant Interface for Energy and Maintenance Systems", published and presented at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2003) (840 KB, 4 pp)
   
• Cliff Federspiel presented the TIEMS and MORE work at the U.S. Green Buildings Council Conference in Austin, Texas. (353 KB, 13 slides)
   
• Luis Villafana presented the TIEMS and MORE work at the Informs Annual Meeting in San Jose.

Contact: David Claridge, Texas A&M University (TAMU), (979) 845-1280; or Clifford Federspiel, University of California, Berkeley, (510) 643-1209.