Last Thursday, our Tom McNeil, Senior Building Performance Engineer and Soft Landings Leader, joined this year’s Soft Landings Conference and spoke about targeting operational energy and delivering low energy outcomes through Soft Landings aftercare.

The 6th annual BSRIA Soft Landings Conference brought together different stakeholders from across the built environment to show how they can each play their part in reaching net zero carbon targets. Dedicated to the theme “Smoothing the path to Net Zero”, it provided valuable insight into how built environment stakeholders can deliver sustainable buildings on the pathway to achieving net zero. Adopted at the early stage of a project, the Soft Landings approach will ensure that the right targets are set at the beginning, and that they will be met at the end.

“Aftercare is essential in getting buildings to work, but this part of the construction project process rarely happens without Soft Landings.” - Tom McNeil, Senior Building Performance Engineer and Soft Landings Leader at Max Fordham

At Max Fordham, we attach great importance to a smooth and efficient handover process, and offer a Soft Landings approach from early design stages that ensures a building that, when complete, better caters for building managers and occupiers. The Soft Landings project team then remains involved for a period after completion to help owners and accupiers get the most out of their building, and to ensure it is operating at its full potential.

To illustrate the significance of the aftercare process, Tom McNeil used St John's College as a case study where the client had a zero carbon ambition for the building. This ambition was modelled and tested during the design phase and then the energy performance and carbon emissions reviewed during operation, which included tweaking of the ground source heat pumps.