USERS’ SATISFACTION LEVEL WITH AN ACADEMIC BUILDING IN NUHU BAMALLI POLYTECHNIC, ZARIA VIA POST OCCUPANCY EVALUATION (POE)

Abstract

Buildings are important components of educational institutions and their conditions and performance have been acknowledged to play vital roles in the productivity of the teachers and the students who use them. As a consequence, evaluation of building facilities after its construction phase has become necessary as it gives insights on the performance of such buildings and what necessary measures could be taken to restore or retain it in good condition. This paper seeks to use the post-occupancy evaluation (POE) approach to get users perception of the condition and performance of one of the most recently constructed academic building in Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic, Zaria, which is the School of Vocational and Technical Education. Data were collected based on questionnaire survey, in which users of the building facilities were asked to report on their assessment and experience of the facility. Sixty-three web-based questionnaire responses were used for the analysis to get mean score of occupants’ opinions. Findings from the study pointed to areas of deficiency in the level of noise, quality and cleanliness of washrooms/toilets and adequacy of storage spaces. It also showed that the deficiency in some of these facilities prompted users’ activities which directly or indirectly affected their comfort and performance level within their work spaces. The study recommends that higher education institutions in Nigeria can improve their buildings performance by using users’ feedback to formulate maintenance policy and improve on future infrastructural development from the design stage. It also recommends that post occupancy evaluation should be incorporated in the building procurement processes.