Ten questions concerning building performance analysis

Building performance analysis is an important yet surprisingly complex activity. This article explores the current understanding of the concept of building performance, and explains why its analysis is a challenging activity that mostly requires expert intervention. It addresses some of the common questions about building performance, such as: What can be learnt from other disciplines that also deal with performance? What are the benefits of applying building performance analysis in the building design process? How can building performance analysis support building operation and facility management? What is the relation between building performance analysis and the class of high performance buildings? What are the prospects of automating building performance analysis? The article concludes with some of the challenges to the development of this area of study, and provides starting points for further research in the domain of building performance analysis.