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Reimagining AEC is Dr Sepehr Abrishami's independent podcast on how the built environment handles information. Each episode takes one subject from digital construction, from the ISO 19650 series and the common data environment to the golden thread, soft landings and the arrival of artificial intelligence in design and surveying practice, and tells it as a single argument built on the published standards, guidance and evidence. Sepehr is a researcher and former architect who leads the Centre for AI in Construction and teaches building information modelling at master's level. The episodes are written for postgraduate students and practitioners who want the reasoning behind the rules, not a summary of them.
My training was in architecture, where a building is designed for people who will only use it later. This is Reimagining AEC, and I am its host, Dr Sepehr Abrishami. This episode turns to Government Soft Landings, an approach built to keep those later users in view while a facility is designed and built.
One figure shows how far it reaches. Under the 2019 guidance on Government Soft Landings for the public sector, the teams that design and build a facility typically stay engaged for three years after handover. The facility is formally evaluated at the end of each of those years. That changes the weight of small design decisions. The guidance makes the point with a plant room. A lesson from earlier projects, it suggests, might be that adjacent boilers were installed with too little space between them to maintain them. It is a small design decision, and once the boilers are in, it becomes the operator's problem for as long as the plant room is in use. Those boilers come from the guidance itself, and I follow them through the whole episode.
The question this episode answers is how a client makes sure that the facility it receives performs as its business case intended, and keeps performing after the delivery teams leave site. My source is the revised guidance for the public sector, Government Soft Landings, which I will shorten to GSL. The Centre for Digital Built Britain published it in 2019, within the UK guidance on building information modelling, or BIM, known as the UK BIM Framework. David Philp was lead author, with David Churcher and Sarah Davidson.
What you should take from the episode is a working grasp of GSL as a method. That means knowing what it asks of a project, where it stands against today's code of practice and who carries it. It also means knowing how its targets become information requirements, and how its tasks, handover and aftercare are planned so that performance is tested in use. I take this in four parts. The first covers what GSL is and which standard now governs it, and the second covers the people and the targets. The third follows the stages of a GSL project to handover, and the fourth covers aftercare, evaluation and the golden thread of information.
So, to the first part, what GSL is. The phrase soft landing usually means a smooth move from construction into handover, close-out and then operation. The guidance says that is only one aspect of GSL. It adds six further requirements, each tied to a clause of BS 8536-1 of 2015, a British Standard on briefing for design and construction, and they fall into two groups. The first group sets the project up. There must be a clear business case that also states the security needs of the project and of the facility in operation. Then come measurable targets for how the facility should perform, reviewed at every information exchange. The second group covers the facility's later life. There must be a defined period of aftercare supported by the delivery teams, and post-occupancy evaluation, or POE, carried out with them. Finally, information must pass smoothly from the project information model, the information built up during delivery, into the asset information model, the information the client uses to run the facility.
Together, the six make comparison possible. Once a facility is in use, actual outcomes can be set against the outcomes it was designed for, and the client can act early when performance is above or below target. GSL can be applied without BIM, although the guidance sees greater value when the two work together. It also asks that adoption be proportionate to the size and complexity of the project.
GSL has a longer history than the 2019 guidance. It takes part of its reference from the Soft Landings Framework developed by the Usable Buildings Trust and BSRIA, the Building Services Research and Information Association, which BSRIA published in 2009. The guidance describes that framework as running from a better understanding of end-user needs to a period of up to three years of aftercare. Its current edition is BSRIA guide BG 54 of 2018, which arranges the work in six phases. In 2011 the Government Construction Strategy set a goal to improve the performance of public facilities for the people who use them. Then came BS 8536 in two parts, Part 1 of 2015 for buildings and Part 2 of 2016 for infrastructure. The 2019 guidance aligned GSL with that standard and with the standards for managing information with BIM published by the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, in its ISO 19650 series.
Since then, the guidance and the standards have moved apart. The 2019 guidance took its building focus from BS 8536-1 of 2015, set the infrastructure part aside and cited the 2015 clauses throughout. For security targets it pointed to PAS 1192-5 of 2015, where PAS stands for Publicly Available Specification. Today the position is different. The British Standards Institution, or BSI, published BS 8536 of 2022, Design, manufacture and construction for operability, on the thirty-first of March 2022, and it supersedes both parts. BSI says the new code aligns more closely with the ISO 19650 series and promotes early involvement of the operator. It also extends each delivery team's commitment to defined aftercare after handover, and applies more GSL principles to the project. PAS 1192-5 was withdrawn in July 2020, and ISO 19650-5 of 2020 now covers the security-minded approach. The Centre for Digital Built Britain closed at the end of September 2022 without revising the guidance. The guidance's process still shapes later documents. The Department for Education's Soft Landings Guide of January 2026, for example, sets out a process that follows GSL.
The practical rule is simple. Use the 2019 guidance for its process, and check every clause it cites against the 2022 code before you write it into an appointment. Any clause number I mention from the 2015 code is history. For the plant room, this first part already settles one thing. The boilers' clearance is a performance target, set early and reviewed at each exchange, and nobody should wait for handover to discover it.
The second part turns to the people and the targets. GSL is collaborative. It involves the client team, which ISO 19650 calls the appointing party, and the delivery teams. On the client side, accountability sits at the top. The owner, usually the client, must make sure the role of owner's representative is filled, a role the guidance calls the GSL champion. The project sponsor, also called the senior responsible officer, holds personal accountability for the project's outcomes and may also act as the owner. Below that level, each client organisation or department should name a senior GSL lead. That lead sets a GSL strategy and implementation plan, and makes sure lessons learned are shared. The project manager then delivers against the GSL targets through the plan, risk, budget and change.
The supply side has a counterpart. Each delivery team should nominate a representative to co-ordinate transition activities, perhaps a building services manager, a design manager or both. To hold these roles together, the guidance recommends a RACI matrix, which records for each task who is responsible, who is accountable, who is consulted and who is informed. That is the same logic as the information management assignment matrix, which has its own episode.
At the centre of all this stands the GSL champion. BS 8536-1 called the role the owner's representative and noted that some call it the soft landings champion. The guidance uses GSL champion throughout. The owner appoints the champion as early as possible, and the champion stays an active presence through design and construction, into operation and beyond. The champion may sit inside the owner's organisation or be an independent third party. The main job is to make sure that design and construction are planned and controlled for a smooth transition into operation and for the agreed periods of aftercare.
Three features define how the champion works. The champion brings operators and end-users into design and construction, and the guidance notes that end-users are often silent in those stages. The champion acts as a critical friend, keeping the delivery teams focused on the target outcomes and on the evidence each exchange produces. And the role is distinct. The champion is neither the project manager nor the facilities manager, and the day-to-day role is not delegated. The champion must make sure the GSL activities happen without having to carry them all out. Early on, the champion hands the delivery teams the material that defines success, from the elaborated business case and the target outcomes to the method of post-occupancy evaluation that will test them in use. On our plant room, it would fall to the champion to see that the lesson about the boilers reaches the designers before the plant room is laid out.
The targets the champion protects fall into four themes, which the guidance takes from the 2015 code, and they answer two broad concerns. The first concern is what the facility consumes and costs. Environmental targets are about consumption, and energy is the clearest case. It is measured as annual use in kilowatt hours per square metre of gross internal floor area, counting both regulated and unregulated use. For assessing and reporting it, the guidance points to TM22, the energy assessment and reporting method of CIBSE, the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. Water and other forms of consumption are targeted in the same way. Economic targets set capital and operational cost side by side, so that design decisions reflect whole-life cost. Capital costs are estimated and planned under the New Rules of Measurement from RICS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The second concern is how the facility serves and protects people. Social targets cover functionality and effectiveness, meaning whether the facility works for the people in it. The guidance recommends a scoring system to put numbers on those qualitative judgements. Security targets follow the built asset security strategy, and where the guidance cites PAS 1192-5, you would use ISO 19650-5 today. Every theme is reviewed at each information exchange and evaluated again through handover and aftercare. Maintainability is one of the social qualities scored, and it is the concern behind our boilers.
Targets alone do not tell a delivery team what information to provide. Plain language questions bridge that gap. BS 8536-1 defined them as requests for information expressed in simple, easy to understand terms. The client drafts them for each key decision point and information exchange, and uses them only where its detailed needs are not known. The guidance gives a contrast. To be sure of the completion date, a client should ask for a programme showing the critical path, rather than posing a plain language question about how completion is assured.
From there the questions travel down through ISO 19650-2 of 2018, and the order matters. It starts with what the client brings, which is its key decision points, plain language questions and performance outcomes. With them goes the level of information need, the measure of how much information is enough, now set out in ISO 7817-1 of 2024. These feed the appointing party's project information requirements and its information delivery milestones, under clauses five point one point two and five point one point three. Those cascade into the exchange information requirements of clause five point two point one, which form part of each lead appointed party's appointment. The cascade ends at clause five point six point four, the review and approval of information before it is shared. In GSL terms, that review is where the design is tested against its target outcomes. The episode on information requirements follows this cascade in more depth.
Now the plant room, as the guidance tells it. The lesson about cramped boilers becomes a plain language question, in the guidance's own words. "Is there sufficient clearance space between items of primary plant?" That question then appears as an exchange information requirement for a soft-clash report from the mechanical design consultant. A soft clash is a check on the clearance zones around equipment, rather than on physical overlaps between objects. The outcome is checked at GSL review meetings, and those reviews continue throughout the project. The question is plain enough for an operator to ask and specific enough for a designer to answer with evidence, at a defined exchange, before any plant is installed. The second part therefore leaves a clear chain. A target becomes a question, the question becomes a requirement, and the requirement is reviewed before information is shared.
The third part follows a GSL project through its stages. The guidance arranges GSL into five stages that came out of consultation with government departments. They differ from the work stages of the 2015 code, so the guidance cross-references each one, and those stage numbers are now history. The first two stages matter most. Strategic assessment, with the outline business case, confirms the high-level objectives. The final business case, with briefing, produces a well-defined brief with measurable targets. The guidance puts particular weight on them because, in its view, effort at the outset has a significant impact on performance and on the long-term cost of running the facility. The design and construct stage then delivers a facility that meets end-users' needs. Pre-handover makes it operationally ready, and the in-use stage monitors its performance and captures lessons. The old work stages were numbered from zero to seven, like the RIBA Plan of Work 2020 from the Royal Institute of British Architects, although the names differ.
Across those stages the guidance lists fifty tasks, and each stage has a governing idea. Strategic assessment fixes who is accountable. The client allocates roles in a GSL RACI matrix and appoints a champion with suitable skills and seniority. The guidance adds that organisational, asset and project information requirements should be prepared at this stage too. Briefing turns lessons and targets into what bidders sign up to. Lessons learned go into a tracker, targets are set under the four themes, and GSL requirements go into the tender information, so that bidders know what they are committing to. Briefing also fixes the strategy for post-occupancy evaluation, meaning what will be measured, when and in what format. In design and construct, the team evidences its targets by modelling and testing, and reviews construction and installation details that could harm performance. On our plant room, the boiler lesson would enter the lessons learned tracker at briefing, and the clearance would be among the details reviewed during design and construction.
Handover is where GSL and information management meet most directly, because the last of the six requirements is the move from the project information model to the asset information model. That move begins well before handover. During design and construct, the team runs a trial transfer of information containers into the systems that will hold the asset information model, such as an asset register or a computer-aided facilities management system. At pre-handover, the as-built project information model is delivered to the client, and information moves into the client's facility management systems. People are prepared alongside the data. End-users receive orientation and training, and the facilities team becomes familiar with key systems, such as the building management system. Last come the records. The building log book is in place, commissioning is logged and reviewed against targets, and the client takes receipt of a digitised operation and maintenance manual. Once the facility is in use, keeping the asset information model current is the business of ISO 19650-3 of 2020, which the episode on information management in the operational phase covers. Handover in GSL is therefore a planned transfer of information and readiness, rehearsed during construction rather than improvised at the end.
The fourth part follows the facility after handover. The 2015 code distinguished two aftercare periods, and the guidance gives their typical lengths. Initial aftercare, typically six to eight weeks after handover, keeps the design and construction teams available on site to help optimise operation. Extended aftercare, typically three years, keeps their support while targets are measured and systems are fine-tuned. Aftercare exists to understand how the facility performs. It is not there to deal with defective work. Formal post-occupancy evaluation of the building's performance takes place at the end of years one, two and three, although organisations may vary this. The champion instigates, manages and evaluates each one. An evaluation can draw on surveys, data from the building management system and observation, or, at its simplest, short review meetings with end-users, operators and the project team.
Cost gets its own test. A gap analysis compares actual operational costs with the operational budget and with the operational target, and forecasts and budgets are then adjusted. These are typical figures, not fixed rules. The Department for Education's guide, for example, builds its aftercare around a twelve-month rectification period, with post-occupancy evaluation at the end of that period. Whatever the timing, the evaluation's findings form part of the asset information model and inform the next business case. One further step for the plant room is my own illustration, not the guidance's. The same clearance could be looked at again during commissioning and on the aftercare walkabouts, so that what the soft-clash report predicted is confirmed in use.
That leads to the golden thread. The guidance's foreword calls GSL fundamental to the golden thread of a facility's purpose. A later section connects that idea to Building a Safer Future, the independent review of building regulations and fire safety led by Dame Judith Hackitt. It was published in May 2018, after the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017. The review found compliance processes weak and complex, with poor record keeping and change control. It called for a golden thread of good quality information, linking design, construction, occupation and maintenance.
The guidance argues that a well-run GSL process generates that thread, and it shows how with one plain language question. "How is the facility safe for access and egress?" The target is set at the start of the project. The outcome is then reviewed as information is approved for sharing, and if it is at risk, either the design changes or the requirement changes, under formal change control. Post-occupancy evaluation then measures the outcome in use. For higher-risk buildings, the golden thread has since become a legal duty in England, under the regime of the Building Safety Act 2022, for clients, principal designers, principal contractors and accountable persons. The episode on the golden thread for higher-risk buildings covers that regime. The guidance applies the same discipline to every facility, whatever its height.
Let me now answer the question I set at the start. A client makes sure that its facility performs as the business case intended by setting measurable targets early and turning them into plain questions, asked and reviewed at every exchange. It gives a champion the job of keeping operation in view. And it keeps the delivery teams engaged through aftercare and evaluation. Followed that way, the cramped boilers would be found in a soft-clash report during design, when moving them means changing a layout rather than altering installed plant.
Appoint the champion early, so that operators and end-users, who are often silent in design and construction, are brought in from the start. Keep the role distinct from project management and facilities management, so that one person makes sure the GSL activities happen without having to carry them all out. Tie each target to a plain language question and an exchange requirement, so that it is tested in the review before information is shared. And keep aftercare and evaluation in the appointment, so that what is learned in use reaches the asset information model and the next brief. Three years and three evaluations are typical figures, and a client may set them differently.
The 2019 guidance is free to download. Read it for its process, cite BS 8536 of 2022 as the current code and ISO 19650-5 for security, and check every 2015 clause before it reaches an appointment. Related episodes cover information requirements, the information management assignment matrix, information management in the operational phase and the golden thread for higher-risk buildings, and they can be heard in any order.
Where operators and end-users first join the conversation, on your own projects or in your own research, is a question that matters to me, Dr Sepehr Abrishami, well beyond this episode of Reimagining AEC. So is what would change if they joined it at the business case, and I would like both questions to matter to you as well.