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ÖGNI Position Paper: Benchmarks in Operation

Published by ÖGNI – Österreichische Gesellschaft für Nachhaltige Immobilienwirtschaft (Austrian Sustainable Building Council)

The ÖGNI Position Paper: Benchmarks in Operation outlines how sustainability can only be achieved through sensible, efficient building operation; and proves that sustainability and efficient operation go hand in hand.

Most people spend around 90% of their time indoors, most of it at home and at work. People’s wellbeing is a subjective perception that depends on numerous factors. In addition to the individual physical and mental condition of the person, these include influences from the respective environment such as thermal and material stress (e.g. from odours or air movements), noise, lighting quality, acoustics or the length of stay and the number of people present in a room.

Because of the individual sensitivity and adaptability of the human body, comfort cannot be measured uniformly. However, it is possible to create room conditions in which most people feel particularly comfortable. In technical building planning, aspects of thermal comfort, i.e. the indoor climate and indoor air quality, have to be taken into account. The essential factors are the room air temperature, the CO2 content as an indicator for the air quality, the relative humidity and the air movement in the room.

Together with the participants of the working group “benchmarks in operation”, ÖGNI set itself the task of defining criteria that describe these comfortable room conditions. ÖGNI wants to convert comfort into verifiable and comprehensible values. In addition to definitions for comfort ranges for criteria such as room air temperature, CO2 content, light quality or room humidity, this position paper also deals with requirements for technical building equipment and its maintenance, the importance of data monitoring and the correct analysis of these measured data.

In addition, ÖGNI has described the future requirements for facility management and has pointed out the potential of digitisation in the real estate industry. Energy efficient buildings should not only be economical, but also offer a high level of comfort through the use of renewable energies, heat recovery, the right architecture and construction methods. Comfort achieved through intelligent building architecture saves complex technical solutions and energy costs.

The European quality certificate of ÖGNI shows that investments pay off over the life cycle of a property. The processes involved in the maintenance of the systems and meaningful monitoring with subsequent analysis of the building data are necessary in order to guarantee the optimum effect of the systems over their entire life cycle. Well-trained facility management is of great importance for the efficient operation of comfortable and healthy properties. This is where new job profiles will emerge, whether it is the facility manager of the future or the building data manager. In the future, it will also be necessary to keep building models up to date about operations and to regularly enter monitoring data. This is the only way to realize the advantages of digitalisation.

Read the publication – ÖGNI Position Paper: Benchmarks in Operation.