Mark P. Mobach

Hanze University of Applied Sciences · Research Centre for Built Environment NoorderRuimte

A large proportion of the global workforce migrated home during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. It remains unclear what the exact differences between home workers and non-home workers were, especially during the pandemic when a return to work was imminent. How were building, workplace, and related facilities associated with workers’...

As campuses wish to stimulate interactions among different campus users, we aim to identify why some locations are successful in fostering unplanned meetings while others are not. This can help campus managers, directors, and other practitioners to optimize their campus to facilitate unplanned meetings between academic staff and companies. Findings...

This study explores if multiple alterations of the classrooms' indoor environmental conditions, which lead to environmental conditions meeting quality class A of Dutch guidelines, result in a positive effect on students' perceptions and performance. A field study, with a between-group experimental design, was conducted during the academic course in...

Background In a global effort to design better hospital buildings for people and organizations, some design principles are still surrounded by great mystery. The aim of this online study was to compare anxiety in an existing single-bed inpatient hospital room with three redesigns of this room in accordance with the principles of Golden Ratio, Feng...

Purpose Until now, it is not clear whether there are differences in patient perception between multi-bedded rooms with two and four beds. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the physical (i.e. room type) and psychosocial (i.e. kindness of roommates and extraversion) aspects on the patients’ experience (i.e. pleasantness of th...

Aim We aim to gain insight into the interaction between challenging behavior as shown by individuals with an intellectual impairment, and space, and to explore the possibilities of using routinely collected data to this end. Background Research on challenging behavior shown by intellectually impaired individuals links their behavior to context, wh...

Purpose This study aims to qualitatively examine the relationship between the indoor environmental quality (IEQ), lecturers’ and students’ perceived internal responses and academic performance. Design/methodology/approach To capture user experiences with the IEQ in classrooms, semi-structured interviews with 11 lecturers and three focus group disc...

The impact of Facility Management as a field of expertise on the implementation of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations (In: Facility Management Journal (FMJ).

With campuses opening up and stimulating interactions among different campus users more and more, we aim to identify the characteristics of successful meeting places (locations) on campus. These can help practitioners such as campus managers and directors to further optimize their campus to facilitate unplanned or serendipitous meetings between aca...

Several studies found that classrooms' indoor environmental quality (IEQ) can positively influence in‐class activities. Understanding and quantifying the combined effect of four indoor environmental parameters, namely indoor air quality and thermal, acoustic, and lighting conditions on people is essential to create an optimal IEQ. Accordingly, a sy...

Aim. This study aims to identify ways that allow studying how intellectually impaired persons showing challenging behaviour interact with space, without impacting their daily lives. Background. Research about space that better suits these persons’ needs is challenging to conduct, since they may have difficulties expressing themselves verbally and a...

Background: The challenging combination of breastfeeding and work is one of the main reasons for early breastfeeding cessation. Although the availability of a lactation room (defined as a private space designated for milk expression or breastfeeding) is important in enabling the combination of breastfeeding and work, little is known about the effe...

Background Behaviours that challenge might prevent intellectually impaired individuals from experiencing a good quality of life (QoL). These behaviours arise in interaction with the environment and can be positively or negatively affected by architecture. Aim This scoping review explores how architecture contributes to the QoL of individuals engag...

In October 2021, the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) launched its new research entity supported by an international, multidisciplinary Research Advisory Committee. IFMA Research’s objective is to advance insights and discussions on best contemporary practices and emerging industry-critical issues among a global community of hig...

Background The challenge of combining professional work and breastfeeding is a key reason why women choose not to breastfeed or to stop breastfeeding early. We posited that having access to a high-quality lactation room at the workplace could influence working mothers’ satisfaction and perceptions related to expressing breast milk at work, which co...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate which critical success factors (CSFs) influence interaction on campuses as identified by the facility directors (FDs) of Dutch university campuses and to discuss how these compare with the literature. Design/methodology/approach All 13 Dutch university campus FDs were interviewed (office and walk...

While activity-based working is gaining popularity worldwide, research shows that workers frequently experience a misfit between the task at hand and their work setting. In the current study, experience sampling data were used to examine how perceived fit in activity-based work environments is related to user behavior (i.e., the use of work setting...

Purpose As hospitals are now being designed with an increasing number of single rooms or cubicles, the individual preference of patients with respect to social contact is of great interest. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the experience of patients in an outpatient infusion center. Design/methodology/approach A total...

To better facilitate on campus-interactions between business and university employees, campus directors first need to know where these interactions, which can lead to knowledge sharing an valorisation, take place. This paper investigates if location-based measurement systems are a viable option to measure where one-to-one interactions between busin...

Background and aim – Challenging behaviour, such as aggression towards oneself, others, or objects, arises in interaction with the environment and may prevent individuals from participating in society and enjoying a high quality of life (QoL). Literature suggests that architects can contribute to prevention, by influencing challenging behaviour bef...

Background and aim-How do customers determine the cleanliness of their surroundings? Research and practice typically focus on the quality of cleaning services while ignoring the role of other environmental stimuli. The aim of this paper is to explore the effects of seating materials and architectural clutter as determinants of customers' perception...

Background and aim – This study applied deduced critical success factors for sensory stimulation of individuals with dementia in a reallife architectural design in The Netherlands. The design was prepared by an architect, a consultant, and staff; and subsequently assessed by family members in a meeting applying interactive virtual reality. The aim...

Breastfeeding has important long-term health consequences, not only for infants, but also for mothers. Researchers have calculated that scaling up breastfeeding could annually prevent 823,000 child deaths and 20,000 breast cancer deaths worldwide. Because of the important effects of breastfeeding, the World Health Organization advises mothers to br...

Background and aim-The objective is to develop the redesign of patient clinics by a living lab consisting of a multidisciplinary group of designers (interior design, facility design, organization design) and art students in participation with end-users and health care professionals at a Dutch university hospital. Methods-Participatory research was...

Background and aim-Many countries signed the Paris Agreement in order to mitigate global average temperature rise. In this context, Dutch authorities also decided to realize a maximum of 35% residual waste by 2020 for its own operations. So, 65% of the total waste should be recyclable or re-usable and only a maximum of 35% should be not. This curre...

Background and aim-In practice, phone pods and office booths, hereafter referred to as pods, have proven their added value and popularity in open-plan offices. How would that work in another context, such as in higher education? This study explores use and user perceptions of these pods in an atrium on a Dutch university campus. Methods / Methodolo...

Background and aim-Palliative care consists of a multitude of factors, such as psychological and spiritual, in addition to or integrated with nursing and facility management. Stewart, Teno, Patrick, & Lynn (1999) have developed a framework that helps understand how structure and process affect the quality of dying. Exploration of the environment of...

Background and aim-This paper studies urban decline, the process in which the built environment suddenly or gradually loses its practical, technical and economic functionality, resulting in it being abandoned by its legitimate occupants and neglected by its owners for an extended period of time. Recent European examples of urban decline from around...

Background and aim-In this study, it is presupposed that the indoor environmental conditions of classrooms can contribute to the quality of the educational process. Thermal, acoustic and visual conditions and indoor air quality (IAQ) may be extremely supportive in order to support the in-class tasks of teachers and students. This study explores the...

Background and aim – The aim of this paper is to look at the professionalization of municipal real estate management (MREM) from an organizational design perspective. Methods / Methodology – Analysis of current and recent MREMliterature in a Dutch context on organizational design. Results – It appears that organizational design is implicitly or exp...

Background and aim-The aim of this paper is present how application of the innovative Indoor Comfort Index (ICI) method reveal the actual indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and the perceived IEQ and its influence on office workers productivity. Application of this tool in a pre and post-test after an office refurbishment, will reveal the effectiven...

Background and aim-Patients undergo one or more medical interventions in a hospital. In the hospital, patients are surrounded by spaces and services. The output in a hospital is the patients' outcome. To gain understanding about a holistic experience of patients, we assessed the experience and well-being of patients at specific focal points of the...

Background and aim-A Dutch healthcare organisation modernizes its real estate portfolio to meet today's requirements and acquired an office building for conversion into a nursing home for elderly with dementia. The purpose of the research has been to study the design principles for elderly with dementia, for innovative and smart application in work...

This study reports the outcomes of a systematic literature review, which aims to determine the influence of four indoor environmental parameters -indoor air, thermal, acoustic, and lighting conditions - on the quality of teaching and learning and on students' academic achievement in schools for higher education, defined as education at a college or...

Challenging behaviour (CB), such as aggression towards oneself, others, or objects, arises in interaction with the environment and is shown in order to escape, increase attention, adjust sensory stimulation, or receive material rewards. CB may prevent individuals from participating in society and enjoying a high quality of life (QoL). Literature su...

Purpose Most people live in cities and work in offices, two contexts offering many lifestyle-related and environmental health risks. To advance their health, this paper aims to introduce an analogy between urban design and facility design to explore whether health-directed design interventions in cities and facilities are related and to look for ap...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to create an overview of current literature and identify gaps in what is known about stimulating interaction through spaces and services provided on university campuses. Design/methodology/approach The authors used the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) statement methodo...

This paper identifies dimensions of perceived cleanliness and subsequently presents a scale for measuring perceived cleanliness in service environments. The cleanliness perceptions scale (CPS) is more comprehensive than existing scales, which focus on how customers perceive the cleanliness of specific interior elements, thereby ignoring other dimen...

Activity-based work environments are widely adopted; however, research shows mixed findings regarding privacy issues, satisfaction with the work environment, and task performance. To further our understanding, two complementary studies drawing on Person-Environment fit theory were conducted: (1) A field study using experience sampling, and (2) A la...

Abstract Background Breastfeeding has important positive long-term health consequences for infants and mothers. The World Health Organization recommends that all infants should be exclusively breastfed for six months or longer, and advises continuation of breastfeeding for two years or beyond. However, these recommendations are not met in many coun...

Purpose: Worldwide, sedentary behaviours and overweight are major health concerns. Most adolescents are insufficiently physically active and have overweight. Moreover, most work is sedentary or requires only light activity. And most people live in cities, a context which discourages participation in physical activity. How can we change this situati...

Noise is a common problem in hospitals, and it is known that social behavior can influence sound levels. The aim of this naturally-occurring field experiment was to assess the influence of a non-talking rule on the actual sound level and perception of patients in an outpatient infusion center. In a quasi-randomized trial two conditions were compare...

Dataset sound level. (XLSX)

Dataset questionnaire. (XLSX)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine how the presence of cleaning staff affects perceptions and satisfaction of train passengers. Day-time cleaning is becoming increasingly popular in (public) service environments. It is however unknown how the presence of cleaning staff in the service environment affects perceptions and satisfaction...

Purpose This paper aims to identify antecedents that influence perceived cleanliness by consulting experts and end-users in the field of facilities management (facility service providers, clients of facility service providers and consultants). Business models were evaluated to understand why some antecedents are adopted by practitioners and others...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review on stimulus, organism and response variables related to actual and perceived cleanliness and develop a conceptual framework to encourage future research on cleanliness. Design/methodology/approach The PRISMA statement methodology for systematic literature review was a...

Satisfaction with activity-based work environments (ABW environments) often falls short of expectations, with striking differences among individual workers. A better understanding of these differences may provide clues for optimising satisfaction with ABW environments and associated organisational outcomes. The current study was designed to examine...

Confidence intervals and p-values for the correlations. (DOCX)

Assumptions and diagnostic plots of model residuals. (DOCX)

Dit artikel beschrijft de stad als microkosmos voor organisaties. Het zoomt in op de relaties tussen de stad, de organisaties die erin zijn gehuisvest en de gezondheid van haar gebruikers. Het artikel opent met een historisch perspectief, om vervolgens te reflecteren op hedendaagse ontwikkelingen. Vervolgens zet de auteur uiteen hoe ruimtelijke int...

A growing body of evidence indicates that natural environments can positively influence people. This study investigated whether the use of motion nature projection in computed tomography (CT) imaging rooms is effective in mitigating psycho-physiological anxiety (vs. no intervention) using a quasi-randomized experiment (N = 97). Perceived anxiety an...

Activity-Based Working (ABW) is supported by work environments that combine hot-desking with a variety of settings, designed for different types of activities. While the advantages of these work environments in terms of space and cost efficiency are undisputed, their effectiveness with respect to job performance and satisfaction is still under deba...

Ruimte vraagt steeds meer aandacht bij het managen van organisaties. Een gebouw kan een belangrijke toegevoegde waarde hebben, maar ook een afbreukrisico vormen. Een goed gekozen gebouw heeft een positief effect op de beleving van wie er binnenkomt en wie er werkt. Keuzes kunnen ook geheel verkeerd uitpakken - waarna het weer jaren duurt voordat er...

Dit artikel kijkt terug op de rijke schakering aan perspectieven, benaderingen, aggregatieniveaus en casussen die in het themanummer ‘Ruimte voor organisaties’ aan de orde zijn gekomen. Het legt de nadruk op het verder ontwikkelen van het perspectief van meervoudige waardecreatie, aan de hand van vragen als: wat betekent dit voor onderwijs en voor...

The aim of this age-simulation field experiment was to assess the influence of route complexity and physical ageing on wayfinding. Seventy-five people (aged 18–28) performed a total of 108 wayfinding tasks (i.e., 42 participants performed two wayfinding tasks and 33 performed one wayfinding task), of which 59 tasks were performed wearing gerontolog...

Purpose – Despite their growing popularity among organisations, satisfaction with activity-based work (ABW) environments is found to be below expectations. Research also suggests that workers typically do not switch frequently, or not at all, between different activity settings. Hence, the purpose of this study is to answer two main questions: Is s...

Purpose-This paper aims to establish the profile of an excellent facility manager in The Netherlands. Design/methodology/approach − As part of a large-scale study on profiles of excellent professionals, a study was carried out to find the key characteristics of an excellent facility manager. Three panel sessions were held in different regions of Th...

Purpose: This field study analyses the quality of the actual thermal comfort and indoor air quality in Dutch office buildings. A linear regression analysis was used to determine how much these variables and demographic variables influenced the perceived thermal comfort of office workers. Approach: Data were collected on-spot at two Dutch office bui...

Purpose Palliative care improves quality of life of patients and relatives facing life-threatening illnesses; it places their needs central (WHO, 2015). It is however unknown if facility design in Dutch hospice care facilities fulfils these needs. This paper aims to establish if services and spaces of hospice care providers match with needs of user...

Abstract for poster presented during the EAWOP conference, 20-23 May 2015

Activity-Based Working (ABW) is supported by work environments that combine hot-desking with a variety of workplaces, designed to support different types of activities. While the advantages of these work environments in terms of efficiency seem obvious (cost savings because less workplaces and space are needed), there is hardly any evidence for the...

Purpose – In many organizations, a major part of the daily activities is perceived as concentrated work (53% in this study). Hence, a lack of privacy at the workplace may be considered as a serious environmental stressor. Activity-based work environments usually provide non-assigned private rooms, to be used on an as-need basis. Is this an effectiv...

An important challenge for facility management is to integrate the complex and comprehensive construct of different service processes and physical elements of the service facility into a meaningful and functional facility design. The difficulty of this task is clearly indicated by the present study that shows that different employee categories for...

The article aims to find predictors of study success from a teacher’s perspective that relate to the built environment. The research is based on a national online survey among 1752 teachers at 18 Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences. Multivariate data analyses were used to test the hypothesis that the quality of spatial and functional aspects at...

Traditionally, the construction industry in New Zealand and in other countries has seen a low productivity and a low track record for successful innovations (Fairweather, 2010). The industry also lags in sustainability (e.g. Nemry, 2008) when seen from a broader or lifecycle perspective. This has a negative impact on private and government spending...

In addressing and discussing Facility Management Innovation (FMI) many different interpretations of both FM and of innovation can be expected to emerge. What exactly is FM? When may we speak of an innovation? Are small improvements included or not? What exactly do organisations do when they say they are working on FM and innovation? What is the obj...

Purpose-Due to an increasing demand for care delivery and emerging new health care technologies facility managers are frequently confronted with changing spatial demands of end-users. The purpose of this study is to explore if facilities planning at a diagnostic outpatient clinic can increase the level of space utilization and the speed of care del...

This current green paper deals with innovation in facility management (FM), a subject which is at the heart of Working Group 3, in benefit of the EuroFM Research Network. It aims to stimulate discussion and further collaborative work, and to generate new knowledge for the European FM community. We do this by knowledge sharing on innovative case pra...

EFMC 2014 EFMC2014-Towards an effective workspace design by end-user emancipation.docx ABSTRACT Purpose-This paper aims to identify whether employees' organisational position affect their perceived quality of the workspace design. By providing possible explanations for the differences and discussing the implications, we aim to establish an effectiv...

In research methodology, epistemology is concerned with the question how humans generate knowledge. In facility management (FM) research, for instance, it deals with the evaluation criteria such as validity and reliability by which researchers discriminate good knowledge from bad. The objective of this paper is to add to the scholarly methodologica...

Purpose This paper's aim is to determine whether shopping facilities in a waiting area influence customer behaviour and whether these behaviours positively influence their satisfaction and related sales of the displayed products. Design/methodology/approach The approach used was a field experiment. At two sites patient behaviours were directly obs...

Purpose-This paper aims to identify perception gaps on the quality of facility services among different users of educational buildings, and provide possible explanations for these perception gaps, and discussing the consequences regarding Facility Management (FM) governance. Design/methodology/approach-This paper is based on the first preliminary a...