Tightening up the design brief for building engineering services

The basis of design for the engineering services in an office development is established at the outset by the design brief. This becomes a reference document for the developer, design team and, ideally, the landlord and tenant/occupier as the case may be. A study of commercial office buildings in London that were either under design, under construction or recently occupied, showed that the concepts upon which building engineering services are developed vary widely and can be misleading (Table 1). Furthermore, current industry recommendations are sometimes overlooked and, despite advances in systems technology, the building services design brief often fails to highlight the benefits which are available and the running cost (cost‐in‐use) economies which may be obtained.