Consultant Max Fordham put a two-year aftercare service in place at The Hayward Gallery (see box, below). The lessons learned are now feeding into future Soft Landings projects
GSL will give the services profession the chance to learn about projects that are in use and to get a real understanding of what the end-users needs are
procure Soft Landings. ‘This is a guide for clients and main contractors who want to include Soft Landings in their “Employers’ Requirements”, in a way that the supply chain can respond to and in a consistent manner,’ explains Bunn. The guide includes sample requirements for clients appointing consultants, clients appointing main contractors and main contractors appointing subcontractors. ‘This is a big change because clients don’t know how to go about procuring Soft Landings at the moment,’ adds Bunn. Morgan Sindall is one main contractor
that is already putting Soft Landings into practice. Senior design manager Stuart
The art of Soft Landings
Max Fordham has provided a two- year aftercare service, overseeing the optimisation of the environmental controls at a recent plant refurbishment at the Hayward Gallery, part of London’s Southbank Centre. To comply with the Government Indemnity Scheme for art loans, the gallery needed to deliver very stable environmental control. ‘Max Fordham has worked closely with the facilities manager and controls specialist to monitor performance, fi ne- tune the controls and tailor the Building Management System user interface to suit how people work, balancing simplicity with visibility and meaningful data,’ says Tamsin Tweddell, senior engineer at Max Fordham.
10 CIBSE Journal March 2013 Providing two years of aftercare has
taught the fi rm many things, which will feed into future projects. ‘Aftercare can be considered to have two phases,’ says Tweddell. ‘The fi rst involves debugging the systems – it could be argued that this is fi xing problems that should have been picked up at the commissioning stage, such as control valves that are not closing fully. Only once plant and controls are set up as specifi ed can the systems be fi ne- tuned. ‘To attempt fi ne-tuning while there are
still defects present is counterproductive. This is why aftercare typically needs a minimum of two years.’ In this case, aftercare was a stand-alone
contract. It was clear that it would have been effective more quickly had it been more integrated into the construction contract. For example, the specialist who set up the controls was not engaged to remain involved after practical completion to fi ne-tune the controls. ‘Designing the Building Management
System to facilitate troubleshooting is different to simply designing to control the building and assuming everything will work. For example, it is helpful to make some internally calculated values more transparent,’ says Tweddell. ‘Most importantly, aftercare is as much
about people and communication as about technology.’
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Thompson is enthusiastic about the rewards that the approach can bring. ‘To be able to run Soft Landings from
the outset is unique and that’s what we’ve done at the NRP Enterprise Centre,’ says Thompson. The new Enterprise Centre – to be built on the Norwich Research Park at the University of East Anglia (UEA) – will host a new Centre for the Built Environment and aims to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and Passivhaus certifi cation. ‘We’ve fi nished stage one of the Soft Landings framework, the briefi ng, and now we are in stage two: design development. We’ve found the workshops have proved a really great way of engaging with the
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