Code of practice for facilities management (Buildings infrastructure) BS 8536-1:2015 gives recommendations for briefing for design and construction, to ensure that designers consider the expected performance of a building in use. The standard applies to all new buildings projects and major refurbishments.

BS 8536-1 & 2 aims to:

• Involve the operator, the operations team and their supply chain from the outset
• Extend the involvement of the supply chain for the project’s delivery through to operations and defined periods of aftercare
• The scope of the revised BS 8536-1 has been expanded to include briefing requirements for soft landings, building information modelling (BIM) and post occupancy evaluation (POE).

The soft landings approach is supported by a BIM workflows, BS8536 4.5 notes: the plan of work is a framework to ensure that the deliverables of all contributors are identified and appropriate to the decisions required at each work stage and should be adopted by the owner as the basis for delivering and operating the asset/facility. This plan should be specific to the project, “digitally checkable” and capable of supporting “Level 2 BIM” This process is illustrated in figure 2 from the BS as below.

Fig 2. Permissions to reproduce extracts from BSI Publications is granted by BSI Standards Limited (BSI). No other use of this material is permitted. 

The plain language questions allied to soft landings should be drafted for each work stage for the purpose of obtaining information to enable operational decisions to be taken during the capital delivery stages.

Annex G of BS8536 sets out a series of exemplar Plain language questions for the owner.

The BIM becomes a good backdrop for the Soft Landings Champion to test the model against the operational strategy.