How can the combination of BREEAM and soft landings successfully deliver a low energy, comfortable building

The performance gap is an industry-wide challenge, disreputably known to all building practitioners. Design teams spend a good portion of the project timeline designing a building that often fails to deliver the project targets without them even being informed. This seems unjustifiable when there are many tools available for advanced performance modelling, lifecycle sustainability strategizing, and stakeholder engagement, to plan, review, and meet the design specification. This paper presents a practical lifecycle guide, based on building phases, to design and deliver energy-efficient buildings with minimized performance gap with respect to energy use and occupant satisfaction. This guide offers a holistic approach for realizing the highest potential of BREEAM and Soft Landings (SL) to address the key contributing issues of performance gap and the inevitable future circumstances. It draws on the commonly used sustainability certification schemes, including BREEAM, NABERS, LEED, Living Building Challenge; as well as, Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) procedures and Soft Landings (SL) framework. Furthermore, this study draws on the specific lessons learned from two major projects at the Heriot-Watt University Campus that utilized BREEAM and SL in their design and delivery.