The 4 th World Construction Symposium2015: Sustainable Development in the Built Environment: Green Growth and Innovative Directions 12-14 June 2015, Colombo, Sri Lanka 12 AFRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY (IEQ) PERFORMANCE IN APPAREL INDUSTRY BUILDINGS IN SRI LANKA M.G.D.T. Vijerathne  and L.D. Indunil P. Seneviratne Department of Building Economics, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka ABSTRACT In the modern world, many people spend large portion of their time in built environments. Accordingly, significance of built environments’ performance is increasing over past two decades. It draws the attention towards the concept of Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) to determine how well built environments are performing as IEQ performance directly affects occupants’ health, comfort, satisfaction and ultimately for a productive work environment. Moreover, IEQ concept can be considered as an integral part of total building performance approach. Today in Sri Lankan industrial sector, especially apparel manufacturing sector grows upward in speedily. For this rapidly development, performance of the built environment is vital as it is having direct relationship with occupants’ productivity. At the present, various approaches to evaluate IEQ performance has being developed. However, it is evident that there is no holistic approach. Similarly in Sri Lanka, there is no comprehensive framework applied in industrial buildings to evaluate IEQ performance. This necessitates the important of developing a holistic IEQ evaluation approach which would greatly benefit to the industrial sector. Survey methodology is used in the research and RII is employed as a data analysing tool to validate the IEQ indicators which have been identified in literature review and modified in preliminary survey. Further, it is established the most significant indicators based on their importance towards IEQ performance in apparel industry buildings with AHP tool. The developed framework comprised with four main IEQ indicators as thermal comfort, indoor air quality, acoustic quality and lighting quality. This framework focused on holistic approach to measure IEQ performance which will allow acceptable built environment while processing continuous improvements. Keywords: Building Performance; Built Environment; Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ); IEQ Indicators; Industrial Buildings. 1. INTRODUCTION The indoor environment quality (IEQ) performance of buildings directly or indirectly affects the buildings operation and its occupant’s satisfaction and productivity (Heinzerling et al., 2013). At present, the concept of an acceptable IEQ is considered as an integral part of the total building performance approach, however it is not fully appreciated yet (Wong et al., 2008). According to Sinou and Kyvelou (2006), there is an emerging issue of poor IEQ related factors negatively impact on industrial building occupants. As the investments on industrial buildings become popular and large numbers of people were attached to the industrial work settings, it was arisen the demand for IEQ improvement to reduce impact of poor IEQ conditions on building occupants (Bannet, 1984). According to Sinou and Kyvelou (2006), nowadays several methods are in practice for evaluating IEQ performance of buildings. It is further verified by Adebiyi et al. (2007) as there is no generally agreed model for IEQ evaluation. Consequently, a critical need exists to develop an IEQ performance evaluation  Corresponding Author- E mail - dimuthuvijerathne@gmail.com