Simple, timely and actionable feedback improves commercial office building performance

This paper presents findings from a program adopted in a portfolio of Australian commercial office buildings in which an =action-reflection' approach was applied to foster collaboration around energy performance =feedback'. An automated energy diagnostic and visualisation system was developed to present simple, timely and actionable information to building operators and their managers. Automated short messages were emailed each morning describing (and illustrating) each building's energy use for the previous day relative to peer buildings and the model's prediction. Variations between actual and predicted impacts (in particular, energy use) pointed to learning opportunities that helped building managers identify and replicate =better than expected' energy performance, and more efficiently respond to =worse than expected' performance. Small teams of building managers from the same neighbourhood and other participants, including the researchers, were assembled on a fortnightly (and ad hoc) basis to evaluate results and share insights, thus contributing to the program's ongoing success.