Alpin (Masdar City) and UC Berkeley (University of California) Partner to Deliver the Latest in Building Evaluation Technology and Occupant Data Management

ABU DHABI, UAE, December 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The ever-changing skyline in the Middle East is hard to keep up with. Architecturally amazing buildings are designed and built all year round, however in an industry that is so fast paced we often forget to stop and think about the purpose of these buildings. The comfort and productivity of People.

Whether building occupants are business professionals, students or patients, all humans have the same basic needs; clean air, general maintenance, thermal comfort and cleanliness, to name a few. While regional buildings may be architecturally exciting from the outside, they often lack a clear focus on the quality of experience for the occupants and therefore most regional buildings perform poorly in terms of thermal comfort, acoustics quality, mold containment and lighting quality.

Over the past six months Alpin's local GCC team worked with Berkeley's world renown Centre for the Built Environment (CBE) in California to change this. Our first order of business to bring best practices for occupant-focused operations to the Middle East was to customise and translate a cost-effective, web-based survey, which is now available in English and Arabic.

The live survey, which is also closely aligned with the LEED® and WELL® building certification systems, is focused on: Acoustic Quality, Air Quality, Cleanliness + Maintenance, Lighting, Furnishings, Space Layout and Thermal Comfort.

"We believe in sustainability for the built environment, and it is for this reason that we were happy to work with Berekley in creating an innovative tool to help optimise building performance," Jourdan Younis, Managing Director of Alpin.

This Occupant Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) survey provides an invaluable source of information for improving the performance of buildings. It takes approximately ten minutes to complete, and the results are quickly available in a visually appealing format. 

With this information readily available, local building owner/operators will have the ability to optimize buildings and help drive employee productivity, student learning and patient recovery.

Not only does this survey allow building operators to receive a pulse as to how buildings are being perceived by their occupants, it also helps inform them as to how well their design updates are working and also provides information as to where to invest in the optimization of their future built assets.

"We were happy to partner with Alpin to develop a tool which will improve the performance of buildings and we will be offering our CBE partners 4 complimentary surveys a year," Lindsay Graham, Berkeley

This tool is a perfect way for building owners to future-proof their buildings, as they are able to compare their building's performance against the CBE's international database of buildings. Helping owner/operators to gain a better understanding of what design features work and don't within their building portfolios. 

Anthony Moddesette, Manager of Plant Operations & Maintenance, UC Davis Medical Centre said, "We manage 2.1 million square feet of medical research space. CBE's Occupant IEQ Survey allowed us to quickly identify the causes of complaints in our buildings, and was an invaluable tool in communicating with senior management to revise our priorities."

To view the IEQ tool, visit http://www.cbe.berkeley.edu/research/survey.htm