Question: How Can Post Occupancy Evaluation help you or DGS do a better job?
What is needed is an education campaign which teaches everyone involved in the process what the total picture is. How well do the various divisions know what the other does. How apprised are the school districts of what goes on in the construction process as far as construction problems and bad details are concerned. There is a misconception that when a building is occupied all the problems have been corrected. Feed back to the design professionals from the occupants would tell them where the shortcommings are.
What would help all parties involved with building projects is a regular monthly technical newsletter. The audience for the newsletter would be everyone involved with the building process - from planner to user. To be effective, the newsletter must focus on both the positive and negative things that occur. The readers for the newletter would include inspectors, occupants, school districts, design professionals and dgs personnel. Topics must cover code issues, review problems, financing problems, construction problems, bureaucracy, current status of the various divisions and personnel. The problems and the solutions must be presented.
The purpose of the newsletter is to make people familiar with the department, the problems that are being faced everyday, how they are corrected and the reasons we do things the way we do them. As far as school design - there is no shortage of topics. An example would have an unidentified construction photo which shows bad detailing/construction practice and how it was corrected. The purpose is education of everyone who reads the newsletter. Another section would cover a different code issue every month; the purpose and history of the code requirement would be presented.
Nick Cimino, Winning Entry
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