What Soft Landings is, the six phases, who owns each one, how it works alongside CIBSE Code M, and how aftercare closes the gap between design intent and how the building actually performs.
Soft Landings is a delivery discipline, not a document. Originating with BSRIA (BG 54) and formalised in the UK as Government Soft Landings, it keeps the design and construction team engaged either side of handover so the building performs the way it was designed to — rather than the team demobilising the week the keys change hands. It is graduated handover plus structured aftercare, with performance targets agreed at inception and tested in use.
Inception and briefing — agree measurable performance outcomes and who owns them. Design development — reality-check those outcomes against what will actually be built and operated. Pre-handover — operators walk the plant, witness commissioning and learn the systems before practical completion. Initial aftercare — the delivery team stays resident on site for the first four to six weeks. Extended aftercare — monitoring, tuning and quarterly reviews across years one to three. Post-occupancy evaluation — measured energy, comfort and occupant feedback compared against the inception targets.
The client names a Soft Landings champion with authority over the brief and the budget. The designers commit to performance targets they will later be measured against. The head contractor programmes aftercare as real, resourced work. The commissioning manager provides the technical evidence — witnessed results, seasonal commissioning, trend data. The facilities team is brought in early enough to influence maintainability, not handed a manual on day one.
Code M governs how commissioning is managed and evidenced up to and through handover; Soft Landings governs the relationship and performance obligations either side of it. They overlap deliberately at pre-handover and seasonal commissioning, so run them as one programme rather than two. In practice the commissioning manager delivers the technical spine — plan, witnessing regime, seasonal commissioning, O&M and training — while Soft Landings adds the briefing targets, operator involvement and aftercare period around it. Duplicating the two creates paperwork, not performance.
Buildings routinely use significantly more energy in operation than the design predicted. The causes are consistent and unglamorous: controls left in default or manual, schedules that never matched actual occupancy, simultaneous heating and cooling, sensors drifting uncalibrated, and setpoints changed to silence a complaint and never changed back. None are design failures — they are tuning failures, and they are only visible once the building is occupied and being trended. Aftercare exists to catch them.
In Australia, aftercare is not just good practice — it is rated. Green Star recognises building tuning and independent commissioning agent involvement, and rewards a structured tuning period after occupancy. NABERS is measured on twelve months of actual metered performance, so a building handed over untuned is rated on its worst year. Soft Landings aftercare and a documented Building Tuning Plan are what turn a design-intent rating into an achieved one.
Aftercare only happens if it is funded and programmed. Name the Soft Landings champion in the brief. Write the aftercare period, its duration and its deliverables into the head contract and the consultant scopes. Put initial and extended aftercare on the master programme as activities with dates, not as a note. Retain a portion of fee or retention against post-occupancy performance review. Specify metering and trend-log access so performance can actually be measured rather than argued about.
Ready looks like: measurable performance targets agreed at inception; operators involved before practical completion; commissioning witnessed and documented; training delivered to the people who will actually run the building; metering and trending live at handover; aftercare resourced with named individuals. It goes wrong when Soft Landings is adopted as a title with no budget behind it, when aftercare is assumed to be the defects liability period, when the facilities team is appointed after handover, and when nobody measures the outcome against what was promised at inception.
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