Abstract:
Buildings are important components of educational institutions and their conditions and performance have been acknowledged to play vital roles in the productivity of the teachers and the students who use them. As a consequence, evaluation of building facilities after its construction phase has become necessary as it gives insights on the performance of such buildings and what necessary measures could be taken to restore or retain it in good condition. This paper seeks to use the post-occupancy evaluation (POE) approach to appraise the condition and performance of the School of Environmental Studies building of Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic, Zaria, Nigeria. Data were collected based on walkthrough/observation survey and questionnaires, in which users of the building facilities were asked to report on their assessment and experience of the facility. Seventy five web based questionnaire responses were used for the analysis to get mean score opinions. Personal interviews of occupants were also used to gather reasonable information from administrators of physical planning and procurement in the institution. Findings from the study pointed to areas of deficiency in the level of noise, quality and cleanliness of washrooms/toilets and adequacy of storage spaces. It also showed that the deficiency in some of these facilities prompted users activities which directly or indirectly affected their comfort and performance level within their work spaces. The study recommends that higher education institutions in Nigeria can improve their buildings performance by using users’ feedback to formulate maintenance policy and improve on future infrastructural development from the design stage. It also recommends that post occupancy evaluation should be incorporated in the building procurement processes.
