Customized performance evaluation approach for Indian green buildings

The green building movement in India is lacking an important link: ensuring that the design intent of such buildings is actually realized. This paper undertakes an exploratory investigation to develop and test a customized building performance evaluation (BPE) approach (I-BPE framework) for the Indian context. As academia is considered to be an initial primary outlet of BPE, a survey of experts is conducted to investigate the drivers and barriers for implementing BPE-based methods in educational curricula. The I-BPE approach is tested in a case study building to gain insights for refining the underlying methods and processes for conducting further BPE studies in the context of India. The expert survey reveals the lack of trained people for teaching BPE as a key challenge to its adoption, implying that trained people are needed as much as frameworks. To enable widespread adoption of I-BPE in India, what will be necessary is a new cadre of building performance evaluators who can be trained (or up-skilled) through formal or continuing education. This will need to be driven by both policy (energy code) and market transformation (‘green’ rating systems). A series of delivery routes are suggested to enable rapid and deeper learning.