Several Kirksey employees recently had the honor of presenting at the Council of Educational Facility Planners International’s annual conference, held in Portland, Oregon.

Julie Hendricks and Colley Hodges presented Post Occupancy – a Classic Detective Game and Nicola Springer, Michael La Nasa, and Gary Machicek presented The Butterfly Effect – Sustainable Design for Our Youngest Learners.

Below is a brief summary of both presentations:

Post Occupancy – a Classic Detective Game
Buildings across the country are underperforming relative to the goals they were designed to meet. Problems can result from a host of causes including unexpected occupant usage, untrained maintenance staff, malfunctioning technology, and design errors.

Post-occupancy evaluations (POEs) are an effective and increasingly popular method used to uncover performance problems and help owners understand and address any issues. Parameters including energy performance, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, illuminance, and acoustical performance are measured and evaluated over time. However, it isn’t always immediately clear what secrets those POE measurements have revealed—interpreting the results requires deductive reasoning and synthesized knowledge of building systems.

Drawing on their experience with post-occupancy evaluations of eight completed buildings, Julie and Colley developed a classic detective game designed to walk attendees through how to conduct a POE study, evaluate the results, and understand the significance of acting on those results. In this game, teams of participants are assigned to a school case study that has a known problem.

Teams are given clues collected from a POE study of the school, and they collaborate to discuss the data and uncover the hidden cause of their school's problem.


Butterfly Effect – Sustainable Design for Our Youngest Learners
The Downtown Houston Childcare Center functions as a teaching tool for young learners. The project features a variety of sustainable features including a chilled beam HVAC system that requires much less energy to provide the same heating and cooling effects as a traditional air HVAC system and radiant flooring. Nicola, Gary, and Michael presented unique, sustainable design solutions they used to create an oasis in a bustling urban center. To learn more about this topic please see our previous blog post.