Co-creation of knowledge and value for post-occupancy decision making

Capital investment fund for schools increased from £683 million in 1996-97 to £8.2 billion in 2010-2011. Decentralisation, has led to devolving responsibilities to local authorities, bringing along more independence for the schools and at the same time an increase in the number of decision makers with a new set of agendas, criteria, concerns and priorities. School buildings on the other hand are prone to post-occupancy design and alteration. In addition to post-occupancy design decisions, many other operational and maintenance decisions need to be made on a day-to-day basis to ensure that all activities within a premise will be carried out flawlessly. An ongoing research project focuses on post-occupancy design issues in schools in the UK. The research investigates the key factors in post-occupancy performance, in close collaboration with key stakeholders in school projects. It also outlines the maintenance and management of those premises and maps out the flow of information and the exchange of knowledge in this process. Using those findings it will then propose a decision support system to assist schools as well as local authorities in their post-occupancy design decisions. This paper establishes the decision processes and investigates the relationships between the stakeholders and how those may have impacts on the decision processes. The main focus of this paper however, is on the collaborative work processes for all the stakeholders to co-create knowledge and value. Once established it will then be used to devise a decision support system which will act as a permanent hub to facilitate information flow and knowledge exchange for post-occupancy works in school buildings. The paper will conclude with the design criteria for such a platform.