Building Performance Evaluations for New and Existing Long-Term Care Homes

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Buildings have a major effect not only on the environment, but also on the health and wellness of the people who occupy them. The COVID-19 pandemic's disproportionate impact on elderly residents in long-term care has revealed serious underlying problems in these facilities and an urgent need to rethink the design, construction and operation of long-term care homes.Although environmentally conscious building practices continue to grow, there is still a gap between anticipated and actual building performance when considering the predicted and actual values for energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and indoor environmental quality that impacts occupant health, productivity and well-being. There is also a lack of data regarding the performance of buildings in the long-term care sector.To better understand these performance gaps, and to identify potential improvements in building design, construction and retrofit/renovation, tools to evaluate building performance may be utilized. Specific toolkits exist for long-term care homes but concentrate primarily on basic attributes such as ambience and interior layout, assistive measures, orientation and wayfinding rather than building design, construction and operation factors that impact human health.This project led by Red River College's Building Efficiency Technology Access Centre will develop and then pilot better tools to advance the knowledge and application of performance evaluations in long-term care homes to enhance the health and wellness of their residents and staff. Application of these tools will enable governments, private and public long-term care organizations as well as the building industry make better, evidence-based decisions about how to improve building operation and maintenance practices and target investments in construction features for new long-term care homes and retrofit/renovation strategies of existing ones.