Health and wellbeing in a deep plan air-conditioned commercial property

The purpose of this paper is to assess the health and wellbeing implications of working in adeep plan office building in a temperate climate and illustrate how office design can add to ordetract from productivity.The authors have carried out post occupancy evaluation surveys on employees before andafter the move from a naturally ventilated, shallow plan office to a deep plan, air-conditionedoffice. The workforce and workload remained constant, which enabled true comparisonbetween building types. The public sector employer specified an environmentally friendlybuilding that incorporates health and wellbeing factors.It is anticipated that in future, deep plan buildings will become increasing expensive toservice and maintain. In this study there was no discernable increase in productivity and asignificant number of correspondents preferred the shallow plan old building.