Heating and Ventilating

BSRIA launched a manifesto for Soft Landings at the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) luncheon at the House of Commons on June 30.
Soft Landings, a joint initiative between BSRIA, the Usable Buildings Trust (UBT), and Darwin Services aims to extend the duties of project teams beyond practical completion. The process covers the period after building handover and up to the first three years of occupation.

The innovative process is designed to fill a gap in the scope of services traditionally provided by designers and builders, encouraging a more long-term and joined-up approach based on feedback and post-completion evaluation.

Mark Way, principal of Darwin Services and the originator of Soft Landings, said: 'We aim to create a process based on learning and sharing feedback, enabling estates managers to work alongside the design and construction team from briefing to design, construction, right through to occupation.

'To be successful, the process has to be embedded in procurement and contractual obligations at the outset, bringing more clarity to roles and augmenting the scope of services to be carried out by builders, designers, facilities and estates managers and where appropriate, the end-user.'

Soft Landings increases designer and constructor involvement after building handover in order to help users get the best out of their buildings and reduce the tensions and frustrations associated with moving in. The initiative includes the need for greater involvement of the designers and the constructors after practical completion when contractual obligations are often minimal.

'Essentially it's a graduated handover, where project teams stay engaged after practical completion to hand-hold clients during the initial period of occupation, and to stay involved up to three years providing professional aftercare,' explained the Soft Landings project manager, Roderic Bunn.

'The process embodies a change in attitudes and practices which can make briefing, design and construction more performance-driven. It follows-through into initial occupancy, and takes proper account of how buildings actually work, and how people want to use them.'

'Soft Landings also provides a natural home for feedback and post-occupancy evaluation: the hot topics for government and their procurement arms' said Bunn. 'Soft Landings could easily be adopted by Partnerships for Schools for example, which is grappling with the enormity of delivering zero-carbon new schools by 2016,' he added.