View from the north: the NRP Enterprise Centre, which will be built on the Norwich Research Park at the University of East Anglia (UEA). It will play host to a new Centre for the Built Environment and aims to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and Passivhaus certifi cation. Soft Landings has been run on the project from the outset
INSET: View from the south
for
The government is set to mandate Soft Landings for new central government buildings and major refurbishments by 2016. An imminent publication from BSRIA points the way forward. Andrew Brister reports
It is not unusual to see energy consumption some three to fi ve times higher than the designers predicted
oft landings has come of age. Government policy requires soft landings for all new central government buildings as well
as major refurbishments from 2016, with the fi rst projects adopting the approach this year. It will be introduced alongside Building Information Modelling (BIM) under the Government Construction Strategy. The coalition hopes to see the capital cost of new public projects fall by 20%, with a similar reduction in energy and maintenance costs. So what exactly is Government Soft
8 CIBSE Journal March 2013
Landings (GSL), and what does it mean for the construction industry and for facilities managers? ‘Soft Landings is designed to help clients and occupiers get the best out of their new or refurbished building,’ explains Gary Clark, chairman of the BSRIA Soft Landings User Group and a project director and research associate at Heriot- Watt University, Edinburgh. ‘It is designed to reduce the tensions and frustrations that so often occur during initial occupancy, and which can easily leave residual problems that can persist indefi nitely. At its core is a greater involvement of designers and constructors with building users and operators before, during and after building handover. It emphasises the importance of improving operational readiness and performance in use.’ The Soft Landings framework was conceived in the late 1990s by architect Mark Way, and was further developed by Bill Bordass, of the Usable Buildings Trust, and David Adamson, of Cambridge University. BSRIA then took up the baton, supporting the publication of the Soft Landings Framework in 2009. ‘Soft Landings extends the duties of the team before handover, in the weeks
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