Strategic technical performance criteria of post occupancy evaluation of refurbished heritage museum buildings / Siti Hajar Quraisha Rahim

Heritage buildings in Malaysia are important in view of the fact that it reveals the history of the country besides acting as a landmark and also as tourism booster. Due to many important roles they play, conservation refurbishment is executed to conserve and preserve heritage buildings for future generation and some of them were adapted into new uses such as a museum. Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is executed to evaluate the building performance after they undergone a refurbishment process. Technical performance is one of the elements POE. Previous studies focus on limited technical performance criteria; however this study will establish the technical part from a more holistic perspective focuses on a heritage museum building. This research aims to establish the technical performance criteria of post occupancy evaluation of refurbished heritage museum buildings. The research begins with semi-structured interview by interviewing five (5) experts which were the curators to identify any other missing criteria and also to confirm the technical performance criteria that the author had found from the literature review. The research proceeded by distributing 126 survey questionnaire to respondents; that related to museum either the management or technical from 18 different museums in order to identify the importance of each criteria that the author had found during semi-structure interview. Both data from semi-structured interview and survey questionnaire showed that there were eleven (11) technical performance criteria of POE of refurbished heritage museum buildings. The technical performance criteria identified were then formulated into three POE instruments; Survey Questionnaire, Observation Evaluation, and Physical Measurement based on their suitability of methods of data collection. However, prior to testing out the POE instruments, the three (3) POE instruments were formulated into a survey questionnaire to identify the suitability of each question in the POE instruments. The survey questionnaires were distributed to 100 experts (curator) from ten (10) museums and lecturers from UiTM. Results showed that all respondents were agreed on the how the Survey Questionnaire, Observation Evaluation, and Physical Measurement were formulated. Finally, the POE instruments were tested on two (2) museums. The data between those three (3) were correlated and showed a positive correlation. Therefore, the Survey Questionnaire, Observation Evaluation, and Physical Measurement can be used to evaluate the technical performance of heritage museum building in Malaysia. It is hoped that the study can contribute to the improvement of technical performance of heritage museum buildings in Malaysia.