The COPE project grew out of discussions with leaders in the office space industry. We spoke with owners and managers of office space, as well as companies that manufacture products for office environments. We invited them to talk about the leading trends in open-plan office accommodation and the problems that were being encountered. What they told us was revealing. Cubicles were shrinking, and partitions were coming down. This was being driven primarily by a desire to save money on real estate: less space per person meant lower development/rental costs. There was also a prevailing management belief that bringing people closer together, and diminishing the barriers to communication, would improve organisational productivity. However, there was also anecdotal evidence that there were downsides to this trend. There were complaints of poorer air quality, noise, and lack of privacy. We believed there was a strong possibility that these negatives could bring their own costs to an organisation, costs that might cancel out or even outweigh any savings in real estate and improvements in communication.

Objectives
Our goal was to evaluate objectively the effects of open-plan office design choices on the office physical environment: air quality, thermal comfort, acoustics, and lighting. Furthermore, we wished to evaluate the effects of these physical environment changes on occupant satisfaction with privacy, the environment, and their jobs. Armed with this information, we felt that decision-makers could choose options that, ideally, would save money but reduce the risk of occupant dissatisfaction.

Deliverables

• A series of reports on studies of the relationships between various open-plan office design parameters and the resulting physical environment, and on studies of the consequences for occupant satisfaction; (see Research Reports )
• Software to calculate the effect of relevant design choices on office acoustics. Results are reported in terms of Speech Intelligibility Index. The software also generates "speech" from a neighbouring workstation, allowing the user to hear the relative effect of design decisions; (see COPE-CALC Software )
• Web-based design software incorporating the results of all the parts of the project. The user specifies open-plan office design parameters and sees the resulting effects on the physical environment, and occupant satisfaction. These results can be compared to relevant standards, or user-input performance parameters. The user can also input costing information. Comparison of multiple design options is facilitated. (see COPE-ODE Software )

COPE Process
It was clear that meeting the COPE objectives would require substantial resources. Our first step was to identify partners to form a research consortium. NRC's consortium partners provided substantial financial and in-kind resources, guidance, access to field study sites, and channels to get the results of the project into practice. Eight consortium meetings were held over the course of the project, and regular electronic communications were maintained through e-mail and a project website.

Research Methods
The COPE project employed a variety of research methods:

Literature Reviews:
We accessed the existing literature on all aspects of the COPE study to ensure the best work of others was considered. Certain topics were the subject of specific literature review papers. Among these topics were: ventilation rates and systems, thermal comfort, acoustic satisfaction, workstation design, and occupant density.

Laboratory Studies:
Three experiments were conducted in full-scale mock-up office laboratories.

• The first was a purely physical experiment looking at the effect of things like workstation size, partition height and materials, and ceiling materials, on the propagation of sounds between adjacent workstations.
• The second was a human factors study in which we played pre-recorded telephone conversations in one cubicle while people worked on various tasks and questionnaires in five neighbouring cubicles. The loudness and spectral content of background noise was varied. The purpose was to evaluate the effect of Speech Intelligibility Index, and other acoustic variables, on worker satisfaction and performance.
• The third was also a purely physical experiment looking at the effect of workstation size, partition height, and diffuser location on the ventilation efficiency and thermal comfort in workstations.

Simulation Studies:
Detailed computer models were used for studies of electric lighting and daylighting. We looked at the effect office design variables, including workstation size, partition height, surface reflectivity, and glazing properties on desktop illuminance, partition luminance, VDT glare, and daylight penetration.

Field Study:
We built a custom instrumented chair + cart system to get a "snapshot" of physical conditions in real cubicles in real buildings. Sensors on the chair measured temperature, humidity, air velocity, illuminance, noise levels, and the concentration of carbon dioxide and other gases. While these measurements were taken the occupant of the cubicle completed a 27-item questionnaire on workplace satisfaction. We collected data from over 770 individual workstations in 9 buildings, including public and private sector buildings in both Canada and the US.

Staff Expertise
NRC staff led all of the research. To conduct this research NRC assembled a large, multidisciplinary team. The team included engineers, psychologists, physicists, and chemists. This team is widely experienced and has won many awards and other forms of recognition from their peers in the scientific community.