Open Building

ABSTRACT
In this paper, three worked examples explore different ways of evaluating flexible design strategies. The first enumerates the number of different physical configurations that are allowed, but a weakness is that it does not take account of the usefulness of the configurations. The second example compares the enumeration of configurations with the enumeration of activity states; it is argued that the enumeration of activity states is more satisfactory. However, enumeration is not feasible for many real world problems. The third example suggests that the objectives of a flexible strategy can be represented by its associated lifecycle options, and shows how the value of a lifecycle option can be estimated by simulation. The lifecycle options approach to quantifying the benefits of flexibility is widely applicable to real world problems.

OpenBuilding-01-1-2.pdf