Managing Performance Based Building of Smart Homes

Smart homes are considered a vital technology in an aging society as they compensate for a shortage in care workers. However, often smart homes do not perform well. Performance management is well known in the manufacturing industry but not common in the building industry. The performance approach is the practice of thinking and working in terms of ends rather than means. It is concerned with what a building or a building product is required to do, and not with prescribing how it is to be constructed. Performance based building (PBB) includes amongst others functional briefing and performance assessments. However, an overview of tasks in PBB is lacking and the principle has not yet been applied to smart homes. Aim of this research is to contribute to performance management in the construction of health smart homes by identifying tasks and proposing a task assignment. Tasks are identified by studying the extended reporting of the Performance Based Building Network (PeBBu). In conclusion we may say that PBB of health smart homes primarily differs from traditional building in the way tasks are performed. PBB demands that the client does not design (specify how to build) but restricts himself to specifying why he wants and why he wants it. PBB also demands that the designers and contractors are selected on both price and capabilities. Besides these alterations in how tasks are performed merely two tasks are added. These are the verification of the realized design and the monitoring of performance of the building in use.