Recently, Natalie and I delivered an informative presentation titled “Developing a Qualitative Occupancy Survey That Is Applicable Across Project Types” at the EDRA56 Conference that took place in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This particular presentation highlighted two projects: our own Studio Visioning Initiative which utilized a pre-occupancy survey, and an operating room project for a hospital that utilized a post-occupancy survey. Some of the common feedback that we received after the session centered around how generous we were with sharing our process and outcomes with a roomful of strangers! This curiosity and sharing are part of our ethos at Shepley Bulfinch; so, in the interest of “sharing it forward” we hope you find this information interesting and useful.

At Shepley Bulfinch, we believe that good design is not just about creating beautiful spaces— it’s about making sure those spaces serve the people who inhabit them. Our Lens team, a cross-disciplinary group focused on strategy, research, and innovation, has been hard at work developing an adaptable, qualitative occupancy evaluation framework to help us better understand how our designs perform.

The continuum for feedback-informed design

Theme 1: Grounding Evaluation in Guiding Principles

The foundation of our evaluation process lies in Shepley Bulfinch’s values: curiosity, diversity, care, integrity, and design. Every pre- and post-occupancy survey begins by asking whether the built space supports these values. Does it promote well-being? Encourage community connection? Reflect the client’s culture?

Survey Statements:

The building, or space, promotes a healthy lifestyle.

The building, or space, offers the necessary areas to support personal comfort and wellness.

The space creates a sense of belonging.

The space prioritizes accessibility and universal design for everyone, regardless of individual abilities or physical limitations.

Navigating through the building is easy.

The finish materials enhance the overall experience of the building, or space.

I feel that the building, or space, is reflective of the company’s culture and identify.

To ensure alignment, we developed survey questions rooted in our firm’s guiding principles and project-specific goals. For example, we ask occupants to rate whether their building promotes a healthy lifestyle, minimizes stress, supports collaboration, and provides easy wayfinding. These questions are both universal and adaptable — anchored by our core mission but responsive to the nuances of each space and community.

Theme 2: Using a Likert Scale to Turn Stories into Data

Architecture often deals with subjective experience—comfort, inspiration, stress, and belonging. To make this feedback measurable, we apply the Likert scale. This familiar format (ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) lets us convert qualitative responses into numerical data.

A well-structured Likert scale survey allows us to compare how different types of buildings support user satisfaction, productivity, and well-being. It also opens the door for cross-sector insights—for example, we can explore how a healthcare facility and a university library might each succeed (or fall short) in supporting mental health or promoting inclusivity.

Using this format helps answer difficult questions: Are we designing spaces that work for everyone? Are there consistent gaps in the occupant experience across different project types? What do high-performing spaces have in common?

Theme 3: A Unified Tool for a Diverse Practice

One of our main goals was to build a single tool that could be used across all of Shepley Bulfinch’s project types and studio locations. To do this, we made the tool flexible enough to accommodate different stakeholders (patients, students, employees, community members), different functions (collaboration zones, operating rooms, reading rooms), and different firm practice groups (healthcare, interiors, sustainability, and more).

Survey questions are structured into categories: utilization, satisfaction, and impact. Each includes a mix of consistent baseline questions and optional “bonus” questions tailored to specific projects, certifications like WELL, or client feedback. This structure ensures that while the survey adapts to each project, the data remains comparable.

The aim is to use this tool as a kind of living lab: a loop of feedback, learning, and refinement that informs our future designs.

Theme 4: Turning Insight into Action

Collecting data is only the beginning. What matters most is how we use it.

We’ve started comparing data across surveys using a new evaluation framework. So far, we’ve completed four pre-occupancy and one post-occupancy evaluation within this structure, in addition to previous POEs conducted outside it.

The image below shows how we plan to compare results across market sectors. As a reminder, the workplace data comes from the pre-occupancy evaluation for Shepley Bulfinch’s Studio Visioning initiative, led by Natalie. The healthcare data is from the post-occupancy evaluation of the operating room project.

Developing a report-out strategy.

We view our firm as a living laboratory. Internally piloting this framework helped us examine post-COVID work patterns and identify which resources are essential for success. It also served as a BETA test. Pre-occupancy evaluations offer insight into how occupants use space, enabling design teams—or firm leadership—to tailor environments, resources, and workflows to better support users.

We recently applied this framework externally in a healthcare project involving two operating rooms. Results varied significantly across hospital departments. Staff in high-stress, stationary roles reported continued stress, while those with more mobility and less intense roles noted that the building’s design helped reduce stress.

Looking ahead, we’re excited to expand this research, incorporate additional case studies, and help clients better understand how their spaces function. This process reflects Shepley Bulfinch’s values as we continue to learn from and share our work with the industry.

Each evaluation culminates in a report highlighting lessons learned. These reports feed into marketing content, white papers, firm-wide workshops, and direct client conversations. They help us communicate what we’re doing well, identify where we can do better, and inspire design decisions rooted in real-world outcomes.

And the impact is measurable. According to research from WELL certification, high occupant satisfaction leads to a 26% increase in reported well-being, a 28% rise in workplace satisfaction, and even a 10% improvement in perceived mental health.

Conclusion

Occupancy evaluations are more than just post-project check-ins. They’re a vital way to close the feedback loop between vision and reality. At Shepley Bulfinch, we’re building a culture where learning from the people who use our buildings is central to our design process.

By aligning our tools with our values, applying structured qualitative methods like the Likert scale, and embedding evaluations across our practice, we’re creating a roadmap for responsive, human-centered design—one project, one occupant, and one insight at a time.