Why Interviewing Occupants is Important

Occupants and building managers are the experts on their own comfort and the occupancy of a building. Therefore, the opportunity to talk to them and ask them questions about their space and habits can be extremely valuable. ​

Being respectful of peoples' time is important. To get valuable and actionable information from your interviews, spend time figuring out what you want to know and how to phrase your questions to get the information you need. 

Preparing Interview Questions

An important aspect of building energy audits are the interviews you have with the building occupants and the building manager. Your interview with. the building manager before you go into the field can determine what questions you want to ask building occupants when you're in the field. You should have an outline of a few questions you want to ask the building occupants because you don't want to disturb peoples' work by asking question after question. ​

Questions for Building Occupants

• For occupants that are present on weekends or off typical business hours (as defined by the building manager), ask them to describe what they see in the building. For example, if they typically arrive at the building at 10pm, are all of the lights on when they arrive or are they off?

• For building occupants that have space heaters, personal shades, desk fans or other adaptations for thermal comfort, prep questions that will prompt them to talk about when they are uncomfortable. Information about how regular their discomfort is or the specific times of day they are cold or hot will be good information to take back to the building manager. 

• For building occupants that have extra lighting or shades to reduce lighting, asking for their comments on the lighting can provide qualitative information for the building manager. These could be indications that an energy conservation or efficiency measure would be a good fit for the building. ​

Tips for Interviewing Building Occupants​

• Prepare questions that engage the occupant to describe things, and avoid questions that will receive a yes or no answer.

• Interviews can be quick and can take 2 minutes, be courteous of peoples' time. The more preparation you do, the easier it will be to select the question that will yield the most information.

• Don't interview everyone, you only need to talk to around 6 people until you start to hear repeated information. If you talk to 2 people and their responses are completely different, continue to talk to occupants until you get a consensus.

• Take notes and write down meaningful quotes from building occupants. Short quotes can be powerful qualitative data to deliver to a building manager. Note that quotes can be anonymous. 

• Don't ask each person every question on your list. Have a good understanding of the questions you want to ask and the information you need before talking to any building occupants in the field.

• Adapt your questions to different occupants, and even adapt your second question based on an occupant's response to your first question. 

• Give occupants context into what you are doing and ask if they'd be willing to speak with you. If the building manager prefers you don't speak to occupants while on your site visit, you can ask if they can set you up with a few occupants to interview at another scheduled time. 

• Look at a floorplan of the building layout and get an idea of whom you'd like to interview. For example, if you see large windows on the south side of the building you may want to interview someone sitting nearby. 

A Case Study from UC Davis

Keywords to Listen for in an Occupant Interview

Any mention of thermal discomfort by building occupants is a clue that investigation may be needed into the HVAC system. The graphic below was developed using UC Davis' comfort tool TherMOOstat. Over the year's we've taken users' comments about comfort and analyzed the most common issues associated with certain comments.