Designing Buildings - User contributions [en]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-16T11:27:28Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or antagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional support. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissioned when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with the GSL process to be managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework (2014) by UBT and BSRIA]. The definitive version on Soft Landings authored by Roderic Bunn, Bill Bordass and Adrian Leaman with assistance from Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy. A Soft Landings Task Force comprising leading design and construction professionals also made considerable contributions to the guidance to ensure its relevance and practicality. BSRIA produced a version for commercial exploitation in 2018.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T14:28:06Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or antagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional support. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissioned when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with the GSL process to be managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T14:27:23Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or antagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissioned when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with the GSL process to be managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T13:11:53Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissioned when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with the GSL process to be managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T13:10:44Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with the GSL process to be managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T13:09:42Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered and can now be downloaded from the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with GSL process managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T13:07:53Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Despite technical innovations that aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered can now be found on the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with GSL process managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T13:02:20Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Although technical innovations aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, design, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings (and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects).

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, set up a personal office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson, and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into a set of Soft Landings procedures tailored to the Estates department's needs.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 Roderic Bunn, the former CIBSE Journal Editor and now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force. He worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landings. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered can now be found on the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. As of 2023 GSL's current sponsor is unclear, but it is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with GSL process managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T12:56:12Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse, and this became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Although technical innvoations aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, desiugn, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects.

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, decided to set up an office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of some of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into the Estates department's Soft Landings procedures.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 the former CIBSE Journal Editor, now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force and worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team led by Roderic Bunn. The result was the first edition Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landinsgs. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance (LCBP) ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 a TSB-led Building Performance Evaluation programme (subsequently run by InnovateUK) ran for four years. The £8 million programe funded around 50 non-domestic building investigations and a similar number of domestic projects. The projects were largely led by industry practices and academics with a view to upskilling the industry in POE procedures. The BPE research highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as had PROBE and the LCBP programmes. Note that InnovateUK wiped the publicly-accessible reports from its website in 2018. The majority were recovered can now be found on the Usable Buildings website (www.usablebuildings.co.uk).

== Soft Landings for Government ==

In 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings. A Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group tendered authoring for a version of Soft Landings specifically for government client-led capital projects. This process resulted in a version of Soft Landings called Government Soft Landings (GSL). GSL differed considerably from the definitive second edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014). To resolve the confusion BSRIA published the Soft Landings & Government Soft Landings convergence guide (2015). GSL was heavily revised in 2018. It was hosted by the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) until the latter was disbanded in September 2022. Its current sponsor is unknown, but GSL is nontheless mandated for all public sector projects (despite being designed for central government capital projects with GSL process managed by a departmental client).

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T12:40:15Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse, and this became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Although technical innvoations aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, desiugn, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects.

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

In the late 1990s Mark Way, chairman of the architectural practice RMJM, decided to set up an office in one of the firm's recently completed buildings. He gained first-hand experience of some of the causes of under-performance, and provided some expert aftercare simply by being available to communicate with the building operators and help them resolve issues. In a subsequent project the client's director of estates was interested in formalising the process. The terms hard and soft landings became part of the language the finance department applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates manager, David Adamson and PROBE's Bill Bordass, Mark developed what the team called Sea Trials. This was an outcome of many of the lessons learned through the PROBE studies. The team attempted to formalise some flexible procedures for building handover and professional csupport. Ultimately, the sea trials ideas developed into the Estates department's Soft Landings procedures.

Although the Soft Landings concepts were captured in a 2004 academic journal paper and a Powerpoint presentation, they were not published in a form that the wider construction industry could adopt. In 2008 the former CIBSE Journal Editor, now a consultant at research agency BSRIA, formed an industry Soft Landings Task Force and worked with Adrian Leaman and Bill Bordass of the newly formed Usable Buildings Trust (UBT) to get Soft Landings into a set of flexible industry guidelines. Mark Way, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, assisted the drafting team led by Roderic Bunn. The result was the Soft Landings Framework (2011). The contributing members of the Task Force were subsequently invited into a 30-strong Soft Landings User Group in order to pilot the procedures, share experiences, and assist with drafting additional guidance such as the reality-checking process Pitstopping (mandated on NHS Scotland projects) and the guide How to Procure Soft Landinsgs. The group was chaired by architect Gary Clark, and comprised many leading architects, engineers and contractors.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 the TSB Building Performance Evaluation programme ran for two years, funding a series of Post-occupancy studies in a wide variety of buildings from within practices. It further highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as earlier programmes had and the need for better expectation management in terms of energy performance and better handover procedures.

== Soft Landings for Government ==

At around the same time in 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings, in the same year it was adopted into the construction strategy, with a Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group being established by the end of the year. By the end of the following year the Soft Landings policy report for UK Government Procurement was published and it became a core element of government procurement.

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T12:35:33Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports for the PROBE studies were converted by the Editor into articles. Careful editing ensured objectivity with minimum hyperbole in order not to offend or anatagonise the construction industry, which often did not emerge well from the studies. A key outcome of the PROBE project was the need to allow buildings to settle down after handover and not rush to judgement, particularly during the defects liability period. Two years of operation was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained relevant in terms of of their technical characteristics and contemporary innovations, such as CHP, displacement ventilation, chilled ceilings, and advanced forms of natural ventilation.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between expected performance and the actual achieved performance in-use. Subsequent post-occupancy projects led by the Carbon Trust and InnovateUK discovered the under-performance was getting worse, and this became popularised as the Performance Gap. Although a widening Performance Gap had many causes, a key one was increasing technical complexity. Although technical innvoations aimed to deliver better performance, ambitions were being compromised by persistent failings in the quality of project delivery. PROBE provided the evidence that the construction industry and its clients needed to adopt a culture of learning from previous projects to inform briefing, desiugn, construction and handover. This led directly to new processes and procedures, notably Soft Landings and subsequently Government Soft Landings, now mandated for public sector building and infrastructure projects.

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

Between 2002-04 the Mark Wray from the Architectural Firm RMJM, effectively set up an office in one of their recently completed buildings and as such gained first hand experience of some of the issues surrounding the performance gap. In a subsequent project the clients director of estates was interested in the theme, particularly as this was around the time of the financial crisis, and asked for a presentation, the terms hard and soft landings being part of the language finance were applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates initially, working with the same estates manager, David Adamson and then Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust (USB). The USB team had started to develop what they called Sea Trials as an outcome of many of the lessons they had learned through the PROBE studies, both were looking to formalise how standard procedures for building handover could be improved to help reduce the performance gap. In 2008-09 Mark Wray, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, worked with the Usable Buildings Trust (UBT), the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) and an industry group to produce the Framework, which became the Soft landings Framework.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 the TSB Building Performance Evaluation programme ran for two years, funding a series of Post-occupancy studies in a wide variety of buildings from within practices. It further highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as earlier programmes had and the need for better expectation management in terms of energy performance and better handover procedures.

== Soft Landings for Government ==

At around the same time in 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings, in the same year it was adopted into the construction strategy, with a Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group being established by the end of the year. By the end of the following year the Soft Landings policy report for UK Government Procurement was published and it became a core element of government procurement.

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T12:34:17Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 1980s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the Journal's editorial panel challenged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The success of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and projects were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commercial construction magazine was entrusted to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement, with all buildings named and their performance reported in the public domain.

The field research team was led by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (latterly by Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd). Engineers and physicists from HGa and William Bordass Associates (WBA) assessed the technical and energy performance of the buildings while Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) measured occupant satisfaction using a questionnaire designed for the project (now commercially available as the BUS Survey). The Editor of the CIBSE Journal, Roderic Bunn, played a pivotal role in selecting the buildings for study and recruiting the building owners and operators into the project. The Editor also ensued that all legal and commercial issues were addressed before publication, and that the original designers had right of reply alongside the published results.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports on each of the buildings in PROBE 1 were converted by BSJ into articles of typically five or six pages, from around 1996 and partially due to feedback from the first phase PROBE 2 also covered procurement issues, water economy, airtightness pressure testing and looked at buildings after two years of operation. Two years was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained innovative, retaining technical interest and novelty.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between the expected performance and the actual achieved performance after occupation. This became known as the performance gap, to which it is still referred and logically highlighted the need not only for better building feedback on individual buildings but also a better industry wide approach to learning from previous projects, briefing and handover. In turn this, in many respects drove further solutions, techniques and project such as Soft Landings and better approaches to expectation management in construction and briefing.

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

Between 2002-04 the Mark Wray from the Architectural Firm RMJM, effectively set up an office in one of their recently completed buildings and as such gained first hand experience of some of the issues surrounding the performance gap. In a subsequent project the clients director of estates was interested in the theme, particularly as this was around the time of the financial crisis, and asked for a presentation, the terms hard and soft landings being part of the language finance were applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates initially, working with the same estates manager, David Adamson and then Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust (USB). The USB team had started to develop what they called Sea Trials as an outcome of many of the lessons they had learned through the PROBE studies, both were looking to formalise how standard procedures for building handover could be improved to help reduce the performance gap. In 2008-09 Mark Wray, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, worked with the Usable Buildings Trust (UBT), the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) and an industry group to produce the Framework, which became the Soft landings Framework.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 the TSB Building Performance Evaluation programme ran for two years, funding a series of Post-occupancy studies in a wide variety of buildings from within practices. It further highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as earlier programmes had and the need for better expectation management in terms of energy performance and better handover procedures.

== Soft Landings for Government ==

At around the same time in 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings, in the same year it was adopted into the construction strategy, with a Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group being established by the end of the year. By the end of the following year the Soft Landings policy report for UK Government Procurement was published and it became a core element of government procurement.

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T11:21:13Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, an NV university building, and an MM office in The Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been analysing new and often innovative non-domestic buildings in the late 190s and early 1990s whose designs were responding to the need to improve energy efficiency while ensuring high levels of indoor environmental quality and occupant comfort and productivity. In 1994, the journal's editorial editorial panel chamllnged the Editor, Roderic Bunn, to find out whether the design ambitions were being achieved in reality.

A research team was assembled and a project called Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) proposed to the Department of the Environment. An initial two-year project was funded, with Government providing 50% of the costs and the publisher of the CIBSE Journal matching the investment by covering the editorial, publishing and dissemination costs along with in-kind contributions from the PROBE survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers. The sucess of the initial PROBE reports led to a further four years of funding via the Government's Partners in Technology competitive funding scheme. Twenty two buildings and project were reported. It is the first and (to date) only time a commerical magazine was funded to conduct original research, wholly independent of corporate, institutional and academic involvement.

The team was made up of Halcrow Gilbert, involved in applying advanced design tools to the design of low-energy buildings, Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) in monitoring occupant satisfaction with buildings through questionnaires and interview techniques, William Bordass Associates (WBA), undertaking and managing investigations into the technical and energy performance of buildings, and using the findings for project-specific advice to the clients and design teams, and publishing guidance material.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports on each of the buildings in PROBE 1 were converted by BSJ into articles of typically five or six pages, from around 1996 and partially due to feedback from the first phase PROBE 2 also covered procurement issues, water economy, airtightness pressure testing and looked at buildings after two years of operation. Two years was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained innovative, retaining technical interest and novelty.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between the expected performance and the actual achieved performance after occupation. This became known as the performance gap, to which it is still referred and logically highlighted the need not only for better building feedback on individual buildings but also a better industry wide approach to learning from previous projects, briefing and handover. In turn this, in many respects drove further solutions, techniques and project such as Soft Landings and better approaches to expectation management in construction and briefing.

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

Between 2002-04 the Mark Wray from the Architectural Firm RMJM, effectively set up an office in one of their recently completed buildings and as such gained first hand experience of some of the issues surrounding the performance gap. In a subsequent project the clients director of estates was interested in the theme, particularly as this was around the time of the financial crisis, and asked for a presentation, the terms hard and soft landings being part of the language finance were applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates initially, working with the same estates manager, David Adamson and then Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust (USB). The USB team had started to develop what they called Sea Trials as an outcome of many of the lessons they had learned through the PROBE studies, both were looking to formalise how standard procedures for building handover could be improved to help reduce the performance gap. In 2008-09 Mark Wray, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, worked with the Usable Buildings Trust (UBT), the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) and an industry group to produce the Framework, which became the Soft landings Framework.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 the TSB Building Performance Evaluation programme ran for two years, funding a series of Post-occupancy studies in a wide variety of buildings from within practices. It further highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as earlier programmes had and the need for better expectation management in terms of energy performance and better handover procedures.

== Soft Landings for Government ==

At around the same time in 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings, in the same year it was adopted into the construction strategy, with a Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group being established by the end of the year. By the end of the following year the Soft Landings policy report for UK Government Procurement was published and it became a core element of government procurement.

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE

2023-02-15T11:03:11Z

Little red:

The Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering project (PROBE) was a government-funded research project studying the in-use performance of innovative non-domestic buildings. It was led by the CIBSE Journal from 1995 to 2002 and carried out by a specialist research team. It is considered by many as a seminal study that uncovered serious performance shortcomings (notably energy wastage and lack of fabric airtightness). It prompted changes to the Building Regulations on airtightness, and piloted new methods of energy analysis and occupant comfort assessments that have since become standard industry procedures.

The PROBE project ran for six years, over three phases of work:

PROBE 1 investigated four air conditioned (AC) office buildings, three educational buildings with what was known as advanced natural ventilation (ANV), and a low-energy medical centre.

PROBE 2 in 1997 which looked at three offices, one Mixed Mode (MM), plus one AC one NV, one NV and two MM educational buildings (one with some ANV), a MM courthouse and a NV warehouse. Airtighness testing was performed by the BRE and BSRIA.

PROBE 3 ran from 1999 - 2002. It covered 6 projects including the application of POE in design reviews, called PROBE Intervention Studies. Building studies included one MM office, two NV learning resource centres, a university building, and an MM office in Netherlands.

= Background =

The Building Services Journal (BSJ)/CIBSE Journal, had been reporting on many new innovative buildings during the early 90's that had started respond to increasingly broad interests of clients from indoor environments and occupant health, to productivity of staff and business strategy as well as the increasing environmental and energy performance demands. In 1994, editorial team from BSJ suggested to report on how these innovations were working in practice and after completion.

They successfully tendered for, the Department of the Environment’s Partners in Technology scheme, which provided 50% government funding for the project, covering post-occupancy investigations of technical energy performance and occupant satisfaction of recent buildings that had been featured in BSJ. BSJ then matched this contribution by covering the costs of the editorial and publication of the results, along with in-kind contributions from the Probe survey team, the building occupiers and their advisers.

The team was made up of Halcrow Gilbert, involved in applying advanced design tools to the design of low-energy buildings, Building Use Studies Ltd (BUS) in monitoring occupant satisfaction with buildings through questionnaires and interview techniques, William Bordass Associates (WBA), undertaking and managing investigations into the technical and energy performance of buildings, and using the findings for project-specific advice to the clients and design teams, and publishing guidance material.

= Pre-PROBE projects =

In 1963 the RIBA (The Royal Institute of British Architects) published its Plan of Work for design team operation, which included a stage M - feedback. Shortly after twenty architectural and engineering practices, the RIBA, the Architects’ Journal and the Ministry of Public Building and Works sponsored the Building Performance Research Unit (BPRU) to undertake feedback, bring together research, teaching and design on building performance, and publish the results.

BPRU lasted for four years, working mainly with comprehensive schools, its results were published in 1972 in the book Building Performance [4]. Its practical findings are still familiar today, such as first cost principles, repeated mistakes, dayighting issues, classroom size issues. It also included a plea for architects to be more involved in feedback.

In the same year the RIBA omitted Stage M from its publication on Architects Appointment, reportedly because clients were not prepared to pay for feedback as an additional service;and it did not wish to create the impression that feedback would be undertaken as a matter of course.

= Outcomes of PROBE =

The confidential technical reports on each of the buildings in PROBE 1 were converted by BSJ into articles of typically five or six pages, from around 1996 and partially due to feedback from the first phase PROBE 2 also covered procurement issues, water economy, airtightness pressure testing and looked at buildings after two years of operation. Two years was seen as sufficient for the buildings to have settled down but short enough that they remained innovative, retaining technical interest and novelty.

Significantly the work highlighted sometimes quite large differences between the expected performance and the actual achieved performance after occupation. This became known as the performance gap, to which it is still referred and logically highlighted the need not only for better building feedback on individual buildings but also a better industry wide approach to learning from previous projects, briefing and handover. In turn this, in many respects drove further solutions, techniques and project such as Soft Landings and better approaches to expectation management in construction and briefing.

= Post-PROBE projects =

== Soft Landings ==

Between 2002-04 the Mark Wray from the Architectural Firm RMJM, effectively set up an office in one of their recently completed buildings and as such gained first hand experience of some of the issues surrounding the performance gap. In a subsequent project the clients director of estates was interested in the theme, particularly as this was around the time of the financial crisis, and asked for a presentation, the terms hard and soft landings being part of the language finance were applied to the procurement of buildings.

Supported by the Universities estates initially, working with the same estates manager, David Adamson and then Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust (USB). The USB team had started to develop what they called Sea Trials as an outcome of many of the lessons they had learned through the PROBE studies, both were looking to formalise how standard procedures for building handover could be improved to help reduce the performance gap. In 2008-09 Mark Wray, now at the Construction Industry Council and the Darwin Consultancy, worked with the Usable Buildings Trust (UBT), the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) and an industry group to produce the Framework, which became the Soft landings Framework.

== Low carbon Buildings Performance ==

23 projects were awarded DECC grants for renewables along with Carbon Trust mentoring and monitoring. 
This further highlighted some of the complexities of the new Low and Zero Carbon (LZC) systems and issues with handover and operation, with many buildings not performing as expected. In worst cases buildings were not complete or commissions when handed over to the client, however many new technologies were trialled and tested.

== Building Performance Evaluation ==

In July 2011 the TSB Building Performance Evaluation programme ran for two years, funding a series of Post-occupancy studies in a wide variety of buildings from within practices. It further highlighted many of the similar issues surrounding the performance gap as earlier programmes had and the need for better expectation management in terms of energy performance and better handover procedures.

== Soft Landings for Government ==

At around the same time in 2011 the Innovation and Growth Team called for UK Government to promote Soft Landings, in the same year it was adopted into the construction strategy, with a Cabinet Office-led Soft Landings working group being established by the end of the year. By the end of the following year the Soft Landings policy report for UK Government Procurement was published and it became a core element of government procurement.

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA guidance on project information process BG 78/2021.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.

= External References =

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk]

Learning more from what we build. By Bill Bordass, William Bordass Associates

[https://www.usablebuildings.co.uk/UsableBuildings/Unprotected/SoftLandingsFramework.pdf The Soft landings Framework by UBT and BSRIA] authored by Mark Way of the Darwin Consultancy and Bill Bordass of the Usable Buildings Trust, with assistance from Adrian Leaman of Building Use Studies and Roderic Bunn of 
BSRIA.

User Needs and Expectations. Chapter for Cole R. and Lorch R. (eds), Buildings, Culture and the Environment, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Adrian Leaman Building Use Studies.

Assessing building performance in use 1: The Probe process, March 1. Building Research & Information; Robert Cohen, Mark Standeven, Bill Bordass, Adrian Leaman.

[[Category:DCN_Commentary]] [[Category:DCN_Project_Knowledge]] [[Category:DCN_Research,_Development_and_Innovation]] [[Category:Projects_and_case_studies]] [[Category:Publications_/_reports]] [[Category:Research_/_Innovation]] [[Category:Standards_/_measurements]] [[Category:Sustainability]] [[Category:Appointments]] [[Category:Client_procedures]] [[Category:Construction_management]] [[Category:Contracts_/_payment]] [[Category:Cost_/_business_planning]] [[Category:Design]] [[Category:Operations]] [[Category:Procurement]]

Expectation management in building design

2023-02-15T09:52:06Z

Little red:

= Expectation management =

Expectation management describes a defined approach where specific consideration is given to the anticipated delivery of an item by one party for another, the item being delivered maybe almost anything from products to services or roles, with the parties being clients, customers, employers or employees (for employee see also Expectancy Theory, V.Vroom 1964). It is a management approach that relates to conception, briefing, communication and feedback strategies which in turn can influence programme, progression and ultimately the actual or perceived success of a project, scheme or building by managing the expectations.

= Expectation interest =

Expectation interest, more formally is a legal term, sometimes used in construction as one of the two categories of potential damages, the other being reliance expenditure. In quite abstract but legal terms it might be described as the value to a promisee of a promise, which in practical terms might be the difference between the market value of a property without defects (ie where construction promise or contract has been upheld) and the market value of the property with the defects (where the promise or contract has not).

Whilst the term as used in expectation management is not necessarily directly linked, it may be more relevant if energy performance in use is part of the contractual obligations, which may for example be the case in energy performance contracting. In this case it would need to be argued that poor energy performance of a building would, under the contract, qualify as a defect and as such the definition of poor, would most need to have been quantified, stated and agreed upon at the start of the contract.

= Performance gap =

It is not clear when the phrase started to be used particularly in relation to project management, buildings and construction. However the growing realisation that end-user expectations needed to be obtained and managed grew out of post-occupancy studies of non-domestic buildings, notably the Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering (PROBE) studies carried out between 1995 and 2002, and subsequent building performance evaluation research programmes using the PROBE techniques. In this context expectations management is most commonly associated with outturn energy performance and levels of occupant satisfaction. Expectations of performance expected by a user, client or design team need to be assessed and compared with actual measured outcomes, and any disparities investigated and resolved.

Published post-occupancy studies carried out by the PROBE Team, the Carbon Trust (2006 - 2011) and more recently by InnovateUK (2011-2015) often revealed large differences between what was expected in terms of energy performance and occupant satisfaction and what was delivered. This became popularised as the Performance Gap. In this context, expectations management is a technique to reduce the risk of performance outcomes diverging from design intentions. It requires reality checks at key procurement gateways, for example at the project stages as defined by the RIBA Plan for Use (the RIBA's interpretation of the Soft Landings Framework developed following the PROBE studies).

= Managing expectations flowchart for occupant satisfaction =

The occupant satisfaction expectations flowchart below shows issues and watch points throughout the various stages of the procurement process. It is aligned with the RIBA Plan of Work stages and the requirements of the RIBA Plan for Use, and helps with delivering the sustainability competence requirements of the Architects Registration Board (2021) This flowchart can be used as guidance for design teams, helping projects to create feedback loops within the procurement process, reality-checking design specifications and therefore helping to managing end-user expectations.

The author, Roderic Bunn, has extensive experience of post-occupancy evaluations. He was a primary author of the definitive edition of the Soft Landings Framework (2014) published jointly by BSRIA and the Usable Buildings Trust (UBT), and authored many supporting guides on Soft Landings. The flowchart provides a process to fill the large gap between early stage end-user involvement and project handover, during which time design intentions can be compromised by changes in a wide range of project variables. These are often caused by pressures on budget and time, but also by inappropriate value-engineering and price gouging that usually introduce performance penalties. Such penalties usually emerge in degraded comfort conditions, poor usability and systems control, and ultimately operational energy wastage and excessive carbon dioxide emissions. The flowchart provides a way by which project teams can track and communicate these risks during procurement, ensuring that emerging performance is made visible to key project stakeholders and prospective end-users, from concept, briefing and detail design stages to project handover and post-occupancy evaluation. Image provided with permission by Roderic Bunn for industry use (copyright retained).

[[File:Expectations_flowchart_copyright_Rod_Bunn.jpg|link=File:Expectations_flowchart_copyright_Rod_Bunn.jpg]]

= Expectation types =

In management terms expectations might be categorised by different characteristics, such as.

* Realistic Expectations, setting objectives and goals within the scope of a budget, resources and timelines.
* Unrealistic Expectations, setting unachievable goals, depending the view point, which can lead to disappointment.
* Adaptive Expectations, goals based on past experiences, that may change and adapt.
* Implicit Expectations, objectives of goals that are given as accepted or standard, within the project.
* Explicit Expectations, formalised, standardised of legally stated goals, objectives or standards.
* Rational Expectations, in between the above based on common knowledge or industry standards.

= Related articles on Designing Buildings =

* Better Buildings Partnership.
* BSRIA Soft Landings Awards.
* Building log book.
* Building performance evaluation.
* Building performance evaluation in non-domestic buildings guide – an introduction to the tests and methods in non-domestic buildings
* Carbon Buzz
* CIBSE Case Study Elizabeth Fry Building.
* Performance gap between building design and operation
* Performance in use of National Trust’s Heelis building and Woodland Trust’s headquarters.
* Post-occupancy Review Of Buildings and their Engineering PROBE
* Client commissioning.
* Extended aftercare.
* Initial aftercare.
* Lessons learned report.
* Post occupancy evaluation.
* Post project review.
* Performance in use.
* Performance of exemplar buildings in use: Bridging the performance gap FB 78.
* Soft landings - helping clients lead contractors.
* Soft landings and business-focused maintenance.
* Soft Landings and Government Soft Landings - A convergence guide for construction projects.
* Soft Landings for owners.
* Specialist commissioning manager.
* Success criteria for soft landings projects.
* Taking action on climate change.
* Technical guide.
*

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