2008-07-04
BSRIA launched a manifesto for Soft Landings at the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) luncheon at the House of Commons on 30 June.
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.
How Soft Landings works
Four key worksteps comprise the Soft Landings process: inception and briefing, pre handover, professional aftercare, and feedback. Each workstep defines roles and responsibilities of the project team, and the requirements of individuals in their roles. It is important that the roles, responsibilities and reporting lines in the ‘demand side’ client team are as well defined as the ‘supply side’ (the design team and constructors).
Each workstep will also address the project’s environmental performance targets in a way that is unambiguous and measurable.
The individuals who will later take over a building’s installed systems must be involved from the outset. The level of expertise within the client body to maintain and control their internal environment requires clarification at the start of the early design stage, so that design for manageability is taken on board.
Each workstep has sign-off gateways that create the structure for fixing decisions. Gateways are both entry and exit points. Different criteria can be applied depending on a project’s context.
Intermediate evaluation workshops during the early design stages will flush out misconceptions on all sides. They ensure stakeholders are fully engaged in the process, and that input from key users is obtained and not lost along the way. The workshops will help to fix decisions on the many smaller, but nevertheless important issues.
BSRIA, the UBT and the Task Group will now begin work on producing a Soft Landings Code of practice, an openaccess tool that can be applied by project teams after a period of tutoring. BSRIA will be running a Soft Landings user and development group to assist the early-adopters, and to revise the process in the light of initial experience.
A Soft Landings toolkit, comprising a Scope of Service document set, will be produced in early 2009 for use by clients and construction teams. Training and certification schemes will follow.
“For the first time, we could have a mechanism to close the credibility gap between the expectation of design teams and the actual performance of buildings in use,” said Roderic Bunn.
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Related contacts
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BSRIA Limited
Old Bracknell Lane West
Bracknell, Berkshire
RG12 7AH UK
T: +44 (0)1344 465600
F: +44 (0)1344 465626 |
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Source: BSRIA PR - 30/06/08 |
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