Key BPA Concepts

Many people in the building industry and associated academia talk about "building performance". However, often this is without a deep understanding of what building performance is. I have studied this in depth, first through my studies in the Netherlands, USA and UK, and then by writing a solid book on the topic of building performance analysis. This part of the website will discuss a set of key concepts to support a better dialogue on the topic.

Definitions:

Building performance: an attribute or characteristic of a building that describes how well that buildings fulfills a functional requirement. There are three sub-categories of building performance: 1. quality - how good the building is at doing some task or function 2. resource saving - how much is needed (or can be saved) for the building to fulfill the function and 3. workload capacity - how much work the building can do.  

Building function: something that the building actively does, like "providing shelter from the elements", "keeping occupants comfortable", or "protecting the building contents from theft". A building function always includes a verb such as maintain, protect, provide.

Building property: an attribute of a building that is static and does not actively fulfills a function, such as "floor area" or, "window-wall-ratio".