Soft Landings / Seasonal Commissioning

Soft landings are meant to manage a building’s performance, both before and after post-occupancy evaluation. Simaxx can become an essential tool for managing soft landings and building performance, whether that means workplace productivity, maintenance, or even specific factors like indoor air quality.


What are Soft Landings?

‘Soft landings’ are a strategy designed to make the transition from construction to occupancy easier. Not all aspects of new or existing buildings will be perfect when the first building occupants move in, and many building elements within new buildings may require additional assessment.

Soft landings are also meant to close the gap between expected and achieved performance. This can mean employing a concept like seasonal commissioning to start re-commissioning appliances at the right times.

What is Seasonal Commissioning?

Seasonal commissioning recognises the need to re-commission heating systems in winter and cooling systems in summer to ensure ideal environmental conditions. The scope of seasonal commissioning can also apply to the management of a building.

In this context, commissioning refers to putting the system into a safe and effective state of operation. The commissioning process differs for every appliance, but many have to be re-commissioned to identify defects or ensure that they perform as expected.

The concept behind seasonal commissioning is to eliminate defects. There has been a growing recognition of building efficiency in recent years, and seasonal commissioning aims to eliminate defective or low-performance appliances by commissioning them at specific times.

Post Occupancy Evaluation

These can both be measured through post-occupancy evaluations and looking into other post-occupancy changes. A post-occupancy evaluation uses various environmental assessment tools – alongside more direct methods of obtaining feedback – to judge overall user satisfaction and post-occupancy performance.

The “final” building may differ from the originally built environment post-occupancy, whether that is due to maintenance, development of new technology, different operating procedures or changes to other aspects of the property.

Simaxx provides an invaluable platform for pooling post-occupancy evaluation and analysis. You can connect the Simaxx platform to various environmental assessment tools and countess pieces of software to log other post-occupancy changes in real time, then convert them into reports or specially-formatted documents as needed.

What criteria are important when a building is handed over to the client / tenants?

Constructing buildings requires a wide range of considerations, and many of these are still relevant during post-occupancy evaluation. This can include:

  • Health and Safety
  • Employee performance
  • Air quality
  • Long-term maintenance
  • Effective heating and cooling
  • Reliable energy systems
  • Energy-efficiency
  • Suitability for dealing with changes in external temperatures
  • Overall building envelope performance and effectiveness
  • Thermal comfort, including airflow and humidity
  • General building design
  • Seasonal commissioning schedules

A post-occupancy evaluation is meant to look into these factors. Soft landings, alongside seasonal commissioning, are meant to limit the issues surrounding these systems and ensure that they remain close to their original peak conditions.

Not all aspects apply to every building or in every climate. For example, seasonal commissioning recognises that heating and cooling systems have to be re-commissioned at the right times, but these may still change depending on the background weather.


Benefits for procurement process

Soft landings require careful pre-planning. Needs and requirements are defined prior to any procurement, with targets being embedded into the overall scope of each project. This allows the work to be carried out with the right level of management and observation, as well as relevant aspects being kept at their peak conditions to ensure a smooth transition.

In short, soft landings are focused on being able to maintain the quality of the property and the well-being of the occupants, even before the initial work is fully carried out. Operating with an understanding of a project’s needs can give you more control over the finalised buildings and their long-term quality.

Simaxx can be used to monitor all parts of your property as needed, from the need to start re-commissioning appliances to the current state of minor lighting systems. It is possible to tie the Simaxx platform into a range of other tools and systems, enabling large-scale performance observation.

How Simaxx can help provide the necessary tools to achieve this construction requirement

Simaxx is able to provide a wide range of core benefits relating to soft landings and seasonal commissioning. The platform’s management systems allow for careful monitoring techniques and data-driven decisions, making it easy to survey various aspects of multiple buildings (or building projects) as needed.

A normal contract period

Simaxx integrates almost seamlessly into most systems. You can use the platform to survey individual tasks in the construction process, manage energy usage, ensure work is carried out to a specific standard practice threshold, and identify issues surrounding the buildings themselves – all within a normal contract period.

This integration means minimal delays, and the systems Simaxx offers can even speed up certain tasks. For projects with very specific deadlines, this can be incredibly important. The growing recognition for long-term building maintenance can also be satisfied since Simaxx can remain useful even after construction.

A concept like seasonal commissioning is very data-driven, meaning that tracking the seasonal commissioning requirements and schedule of a building can take a lot of work. Observing your building for seasonal commissioning needs post-construction is entirely possible and even recommended.

Engineering services systems

Simaxx can be integrated into all kinds of systems, allowing you to monitor every one of your building’s engineering services systems and internal appliances as needed. Whether you are trying to appease stakeholder groups or just ensure a high-quality and high-productivity property, Simaxx makes it easier to survey whatever systems are causing the most problems.

From there, you can identify issues with currently-occupied buildings just as easily as buildings currently in progress. For example, you might tie Simaxx into the energy system to survey energy usage more effectively once the property is fully occupied.

It is even possible to use monitoring tools to track seasonal commissioning requirements. Seasonal commissioning focuses on re-commissioning devices when they are most needed, so tracking your seasonal commissioning needs can lead to some money saved and valuable lessons learned.

Various environmental assessment tools

Not only that but Simaxx can be linked to a range of sensor systems. This allows a huge wealth of information to be gathered: not only could you collect weather information for seasonal commissioning, but you could collect that information alongside indoor occupancy patterns to use as a point of comparison during seasonal commissioning surveys.

Attempts at seasonal commissioning, and other extended activities, fall into a niche where clear distinctions are important. Comparing indoor occupancy patterns and seasonal commissioning requires some clear distinctions between details like external temperatures and the kind of seasonal commissioning you are doing.

Simaxx acts as an ideal platform for making sure that all extended activities fall into a single, highly flexible storage tool. You have full control over how you use the platform and can record information on almost anything as needed, whether that is seasonal commissioning records or just information about the lighting.