Abstract

The Indian Green Building Council claims that India is the second country in the world with the largest registered green building footprint; however, independent evaluation of post-occupancy building performance of such buildings is rare in India. This paper seeks to develop, test and refine a building performance evaluation (BPE) approach for the Indian context (I-BPE), to empirically measure and provide suggestions to improve the actual energy and environmental performance of green buildings using low-cost sensors, occupancy surveys, discussions with design teams, review of design documents, and analysis. Firstly, a critical review of BPE-related studies of Indian buildings is conducted to identify the study elements, methods and tools that are commonly used for performance evaluation in India. These methods are then compared with those used in the UK, for assessing and disaggregating energy use, monitoring environmental conditions and understanding of occupant satisfaction, to customise them for the Indian context in terms of data accessibility, relevance, user expertise and costs. Lessons from the UK’s experience through Innovate UK’s BPE programme are augmented with Indian building industry experience. The resultant customised I-BPE approach is first tested on a pilot, and followed by a whole building performance evaluation of a green building during the inuse stage. This BPE case study is used to refine the appropriateness for the I-BPE approach for the Indian context, and provide insights for improving future building design, engineering and management. The intent of this integrated and customised approach for assessing real building performance in India is expected to assist the building industry in the delivery of better performing buildings. It will also improve pedagogy across schools of engineering and architecture with better understanding of actual performance.