Indoor environment quality and upgrading of European office buildings

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is an important quality aspect of office buildings, which is acknowledged in a new European methodology and software for office building refurbishment (TOBUS). In TOBUS, an inventory of complaints from occupants about IEQ is made as well as an inventory of characteristics of building and HVAC-system. Based on relations between characteristics of buildings and systems and the use of the building, different possible causes for the problems can be identified and possible actions for improvement can be selected. A relation scheme is provided with relations between objects and types, complaints of occupants in an office building, possible causes of those complaints and actions that should take away those complaints. Furthermore, a relation scheme is provided with causes and actions that cannot be related to an object. A procedure to qualify and quantify the IEQ performance of a building is given. This article describes the results of the field investigations in 12 European buildings focused on the IEQ part. Discussions and conclusions from this field study with respect to IEQ and with respect to the methods and procedures used are also presented.