Available online at 2019.creative-construction-conference.com/proceedings/ CCC 2019 Proceedings of the Creative Construction Conference (2019) 093 Edited by: Miroslaw J. Skibniewski & Miklos Hajdu https://doi.org/10.3311/CCC2019-093 *Corresponding author: Gulben Calis email: gulben.calis@ege.edu.tr Creative Construction Conference 2019, CCC 2019, 29 June - 2 July 2019, Budapest, Hungary Do Thermal Comfort Standards Ensure Occupant Satisfaction? Learning From Occupants’ Thermal Complaints Ezgi Kocaman a , Merve Kuru a , Gulben Calis a* a Ege University, Department of Civil Engineering, Izmir 35100, Turkey Abstract Today, buildings are operated according to the standards (i.e. thermal), however; the recommended values in the standards might not necessarily address occupants’ needs, and, thus, occupant complaints might arise. This study aims at assessing the performance of the predicted mean vote (PMV) model to detect occupant thermal dissatisfaction. The case study was conducted in a commercial building located in Paris, France between January 2017 and May 2018. Indoor environmental conditions were monitored via sensors and an online tool was used to collect occupant thermal complaints. A total of 53 thermal complaints were analyzed and the corresponding measurements were checked against the reference values suggested by the ISO 7730 Thermal Comfort Standard. The results show that all of the operative temperature measurements both in the heating and cooling seasons were within the thresholds suggested by the standards. In addition, the PMV method suggested that only 4% of the occupants were dissatisfied with the indoor environment. However; the actual dissatisfaction ratio of occupants was 100% under these indoor environmental conditions. The findings of this study show that predefined comfort ranges, and, thus thermal comfort standards are not able to predict occupant thermal dissatisfaction. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019. Keywords: Thermal complaint; PMV-PPD model; thermal comfort; ISO 7730 1. Introduction Thermal comfort is stated as an important part of the built environment that affects not only health and wellbeing but also productivity of occupants. Therefore, maintaining a comfortable and satisfactory thermal environment for occupants is one of the main concerns of facility managers. Today, buildings are generally operated according to the thermal comfort standards such as American Society of Heating, Air conditioning & Refrigeration Engineers, US [1] and ISO Standard 7730 [2]. Both standards use the predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) indices to assess thermal comfort conditions in indoor environments. Since the PMV-PPD model recommends that a narrow temperature range be applied equally across all building types, climatic zones and population, the prediction accuracy of PMV and PPD indices has been questioned by many researchers. Studies conducted in hot and humid climatic conditions prove that the PMV-PPD model tends to over-predict the perceived warmth in the built environment [3–6]. Furthermore, thermal comfort complaints have been reported in different types of buildings [3,7–11]. However, these studies should also check the compatibility of indoor environmental