An Examination of Current Practices in Identifying Occupant Interactions in Renovation Projects

Renovations of occupied buildings are characterized by tenants moving and crews working in different locations within the building. Therefore, it is crucial for project planners to identify occupant interactions instances where tenants and/or crews share spaces in order to create a renovation schedule that has no disruptive interactions. Failure to identify these interactions during the planning stage can lead to unintended disruptions during renovation, causing loss in productivity and tenant dissatisfaction. Based on observations from seven renovation projects, this paper examines the state-of-the-art practices and performance of current renovation planning methods to identify occupant interactions. Identifying interactions using todayís methods is difficult because the number of locations, tenants, crews, and renovation activities make the current manual identification process inaccurate and inefficient. This paper suggests that an automated method to identify interactions would enable project planners to integrate spatial, organizational, and temporal planning information and identifies the requirements for such a method. A review of existing concepts and methods shows that an automated method is feasible and highlights the extensions needed to enable an efficient representation of activities and accurate identification of shared spaces.