FLEX 3.0: An instrument to formulate the demand for and assessing the supply of the adaptive capacity of buildings

Market developments show increased demands for flexibility and sustainability by users and owners of buildings. A direct connection can be made between adaptive building and sustainability. The longer a building can keep its functional life cycle instead of becoming vacant or being demolished, the more sustainable a building will be. One way of looking into this phenomenon is the more a building is flexible and able to adapt to changing user demands, the longer it will keep its functional life cycle. In 2014 a paper was presented at the International Union of Architects World Congress UIA2014 in Durban SA, titled Adaptive Capacity of Buildings. A report was given of an extensive international literature survey and the development of a method to determine the adaptive capacity of buildings. In total 147 flexibility indicators were described with accompanying assessment values. The most important recommendation for the next step was the development of an easy to use assessment method in practice with a limited number of important adaptability performance indicators.
Further research led in 2015 to a renewed assessment method with 83 indicators, clustered in five layers with different life cycles. This method was called FLEX 2.0 and a derived version was called FLEX 2.0 LIGHT with only 17 of the most important indicators. This was presented in 2015 at the CIB Conference - Going North for sustainability in London. At the same time this method was used in two separate research projects for an evaluation with experts in practice. One research project concerned the development of school buildings; the other project was related to the development of office buildings. The main conclusions and recommendations of both research projects to evaluate the FLEX 2.0 method in practice with two different types of real estate will be described in this paper. Questions will be answered about the differences and similarities between the two different categories of real estate when using this flexibility assessment method. This will lead to some important conclusions for the next version of the method: FLEX 3.0. Finally a renewed framework for this next version will be presented.