Hi Elizabeth, that statement's intent is to establish a process for soliciting feedback and ability for receiving feedback. If you expand your description that you have there and can show evidence of an 'established' ongoing practice you should be fine.
Anyone else have other suggestions?

Thanks so much, Jeff - appreciate the insight!

I think both of those options are very appropriate and very well may be sufficient. Other more structural/intensive options could be investing in a white noise system or installing sound absorbing panels or privacy partitions.

Emily- it's perfectly fine to distribute the survey to everyone, and I would recommend that you do so that you get the highest number of returned surveys as possible. Sometimes it is difficult to get enough back!

I agree with Allison and would just note that you may want to review your data for unusual clusters of responses - significant portions of the building that are over- or under-represented can generate misleading outcomes. If you have 3 tenants and all your respondents come from one of them, or 3 floors of the building and all the responses are from that floor, the reviewer may be concerned you're not getting the whole picture in terms of occupant comfort.

Hope that helps,

Dan

I have a similar question. On PI Form 3, Occupant and Usage Data, our average occupancy from Table PIf3-2 is 77%. Do we use 77% of our FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories. to account for the percentage of survey respondents? That is, if our FTE is 120 and the percentage from the table is 77%, are we required to provide at least 120 x 0.77 = 92.4 x 0.30 = 28 responses to the survey? Or, are we required to provide 120 x 0.30 = 36 responses?
Thanks.

John, you should be fine with 11 responses since that is more than 30% of your total staff members. When you document this credit, just be sure to indicate the number of people that are considered regular occupants; defined as people with a permanent workstation and who typically spend at least 10 hours/week in the project building.

Cynthia, PIf3-2 accounts for the percent of the building that is occupied, not the percentage of FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories. that are regular building occupants. Therefore, I don't think it is appropriate to use the average occupancy of 77%. If all 120 occupants are full time employees, then use the FTE number of 120, requiring 36 responses.

Ok. Here's the problem. During the performance period the owner opened up the last remaining floor raising the FTEFull-time equivalent (FTE) represents a regular building occupant who spends 8 hours a day (40 hours a week) in the project building. Part-time or overtime occupants have FTE values based on their hours per day divided by 8 (or hours per week divided by 40). Transient Occupants can be reported as either daily totals or as part of the FTE. Residential occupancy should be estimated based on the number and size of units. Core and Shell projects should refer to the default occupancy table in the Reference Guide appendix. All occupant assumptions must be consistent across all credits in all categories. count from 100 to 120. The occupant comfort survey had been done before that, with 30 responses gathered. It may not be a big deal to get 6 more people to fill out the survey before the end of the performance period...but if it is, will this explanation be acceptable to USGBC ?

Cynthia, the survey must be conducted at one time, so acquiring 6 more responses well after the original survey was administered is not allowed. However, I would use the FTE number of 100 in the LEED template, since that was the correct FTE count on the date that the survey was conducted. Just be sure to write an explanation of why the number of regular building occupants for this credit is lower than the FTE number of 120.

We have had success in the past by doing a paper survey (I know- not very green!) where people get a raffle ticket when they turn their surveys in in -person. This protects the anonymity of the survey while still allowing an incentive.

Tim - Was including one's name with the survey mandatory? Or was there an option where an occupant could respond to the survey without including their name (even if that meant not being eligible for the prize)? If including a name was mandatory, I think you're stuck and will have to redo the survey as they request. The problem being that if I have to include my name, I may be less likely to be honest about complaints or problems than if I were allowed to be anonymous. However, if including the name was optional to get entered in the drawing, you absolutely should be OK. Allowing folks to trade their anonymity for a prize still assures individuals who are unhappy about building conditions with an avenue for responding honestly if they so desire. It's obviously not perfect, but I really think GBCI could live with that given the reality of how difficult achieving the required response actually is - I've been amazed at how many of my projects struggle to achieve 30% even with an incentive like the one you employed. This credit ends up being a much tougher undertaking than it appears on its face.

I hope this helps a bit.
Dan

Rob- I have not run into that situation before (thankfully the corrections I've had to do on projects have been pretty minor), so I unfortunately do not have any guidance specifically from GBCI. Since it sounds like you can't really do any more than you have already done, I would recommend that you just submit the documentation including the steps you have supplied above and see if it gets accepted.

'Corrective action' is loosely defined - I think the expectation is simply that you take meaningful steps that you think will remedy the problem. It doesn't require massive changes or investment, and sometimes simply explaining the situation and helping occupants or tenants adapt to it is enough. But there is some obligation to make a sincere effort to fix the situation that resulted in occupant discomfort. I think your description is likely to meet that requirement, especially if you can show what exactly your offer to help represents.

My experience with this is that as long as the survey was conducted during the performance period (maximum of two years, as you'll recall, for individual credits), you are fine. I usually recommend that my projects take care of this survey well before the 3-month shared performance period so we have plenty of time for corrective action. Better to survey early and make improvements early than waiting until the PP and rushing through either aspect.

Great answer Dan. The real thing to remember is that while all credits have to be attempted during the performance period, not all of them will take the entire period to complete.

Geoffrey- two surveys may make sense under certain conditions. However, I personally would be hesitant to do two surveys because if your building is large with multiple tenants or a large number of employees, it may be difficult to get the required 30% survey response rate once, much less twice. Also, keep in mind that the required corrective actions (if any) are likely to be pretty minor such as checking and adjusting temperature setpointsSetpoints are normal operating ranges for building systems and indoor environmental quality. When the building systems are outside of their normal operating range, action is taken by the building operator or automation system. or diffuser airflows or adding tasklights or perhaps window shades- not wholesale changes to the systems. If you craft your survey in a way that allows you to identify specific problem areas, these adjustments may also only be necessary in very small areas of the building, which typically makes them very easy to accomplish during the performance period.

We actually have a relatively small office (less than 100 people). They aren't all minor. I was looking at some of the questions from the CBE and one of them is about cubicle and furnishing comfort. What if it turns out that half the office is dissatisfied with their chairs or cubicles. That could be an expensive fix if we have to replace all the chairs for example.

You've got the make the call for your specific project. Do you think it's likely that a lot of people are dissatisfied? Is occupant comfort a high priority? If so, your conservative approach may be justified.

Geoff - I would also note that furniture comfort is not a required area of the survey for EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. compliance. The CBE survey is fantastic and quite comprehensive, but goes beyond EBOM requirements in a number of ways. And I agree with both Allison and Tristan - in most instances two surveys are not necessary, but in all instances where surveys are part of EBOM the user has to assess the likelihood that they will get favorable results with an initial survey and the possibility that the survey will reveal substantial room for improvement that may need to be confirmed with a follow-up survey. Final note - remember that your performance period can be extended backward up to 2 years. So if you conduct your survey within 21 months before the shared 3-month PP for other credits, if the result is good, you're done. If not, you have plenty of time to make changes and re-survey.

I had recently thought of you last point. That given our option to choose the length of the performance period, we could have up to two years to remedy any issues. Thank you guys.

Dan, I am understanding your point correctly - you CAN conduct the occupant survey BEFORE the performance period used for other credits? My client wants to combine the occupant comfort survey with the transportation survery. So if we combine both and do now, 2-3 months before we begin our performance period, it will be okay?

That's right Nena - The performance period for a credit (an individual credit, some credits, or all credits) can be up to 2 years hence, so even if you have a shared performance period for all credits planned for Jan, Feb, March 2013 you could conduct your surveys tomorrow and still be fine. In fact, if you did conduct your surveys tomorrow, you can think of them as having a 'shelf-life' of 2 years. Many projects conduct things like the transportation survey early in their LEED process to have confidence in the points they will eventually earn. Conducting the occupant comfort survey as early as possible is similarly helpful because it allows you plenty of time to ensure a high response rate AND complete any corrective action that may be necessary.

Hope that helps,

Dan

Hi Dan, thank you for the response. I am still a little unsure because the LEED online template ask if you conducted the survey during the performance period. Would you just adjust the pp for this credit to included the date of your survey (even if it is well before the pp for all other credits)?

Also, does this still apply if our project is already registred? This project was registered over a year ago, but has nothing has been done. Our performance period will begin this Fall and end within 3 months.

Yes and yes! You can extend the PP for that credit to include the date of your survey, and don't worry about the registration date. Registration dates are effectively irrelevant, as USGBC wants to encourage projects to register early, not see the registration date as some kind of clock-starter or deadline-inducer.

Dan

It depends on how your building performs in the survey. If the survey results show that more than 20% of respondents are dissatisfied with a particular aspect of building comfort (such as indoor air quality), you must take corrective actions during the performance period. See the Documentation Toolkit for an example of how to document this.