Thermal Comfort and Productivity

This paper discusses the link between thermal comfort and productivity of office workers and presents some limited conclusions from a European field study of office buildings. The importance of productivity measurement and current methodologies of measurement are discussed and shortcomings highlighted. The paper concludes with an introduction to a new technology developed in Japan that may provide an alternative method of measuring productivity in the field. INDEX TERMS Thermal comfort, Productivity, Chaos Theory, Fatigue, Field Studies INTRODUCTION Despite the obvious importance of thermal comfort issues, building designers are still loath to spend time and effort in providing well-designed climate-control solutions. They argue that whilst thermal comfort is important, it is more vital to reduce construction and running costs of the building. This view is echoed by building owners/ managers who are concerned primarily with financial issues, mainly in connection with their businesses rather than with the building. But when one considers the cost of a building over its entire lifetime, the construction and running costs are relatively minor when compared with occupant salaries and business running costs (Edwards, 1989.) It would make sense, therefore, to optimise occupant working and ensure that absenteeism is minimised and productivity maximised. In recent years, researchers have sought to establish a definite link between thermal comfort and occupant productivity. Whilst most researchers would agree that a link exists, it is difficult to prove scientifically or statistically since productivity is difficult to measure and quantify. In practice, there have been two main approaches to the assessment of productivity and the link to thermal comfort. Specific Task Performance Studies have shown that under strictly controlled conditions, the performance of certain carefully designed tasks is temperature dependent. The performance of some tasks improves with rising room temperature, while that of the others deteriorates (Wyon, 1986.) Despite the high quality of this research, it has proven difficult to relate the results to the circumstances of everyday office work as motivation and stress under test conditions differ from those in the workplace. One of the few examples of productivity being measured in the field is a study by (Kroner and Stark-Martin, 1994.) In this study, a group of office workers whose job was to process files were monitored over two periods, preand post-installation of a new air-conditioning system. An ‘in-house’ system of counting the number of files that each employee processed per day * Contact author e-mail: [email protected] Proceedings: Indoor Air 2002