A framework to assess the role of stakeholders in sustainable building retrofit decisions

Stakeholders are concerned with increasing the sustainability of their existing buildings from social, environmental, economic, and technical perspectives. Several studies indicate that conflicting stakeholder requirements are a main barrier in implementing sustainable retrofits with the decision often made based purely on short-term economic grounds. However, most studies did not take into account the important role that different stakeholders can play in determining the type and extent of any retrofit measures, or develop methodologies that integrate social, environmental, economic, and technical concerns. In this research, a House of Quality (HOQ) model is developed that synthesizes differences among the stakeholders and integrates their competing objectives to establish hierarchy of retrofits that meet the stakeholder requirements in using the existing building. The developed model is tested on a decision to sustainably retrofit an existing US Navy case study building. The HOQ analysis revealed that the stakeholder type for this case study did not affect the ranking of their requirements, and in general, all 5 of the main groups of stakeholders involved in this study, agreed without persuasion that the primary reasons for implementing sustainable retrofits in each of the four main systems are to save energy, reduce costs, and adhere to policy. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.