Agree what each room does before the spec is written.
Casient Brief is a tool for architects, designers and services consultants. You and your client pick each room’s behaviours from ORBS cards, record why anything changes, and give the integrator and the consultants schedules they can work from.
Try it in your browser with no account. A free registration lets you save, export and print, as most tools do: register free. It records what your client wants. It isn’t a quote, a design or a certification.
Smart-home scope usually reaches the spec as a product list.
The spec names products, not behaviour
“KNX lighting control, keypads, motorised blinds.” That says what to buy. It doesn’t say what the hallway does at 2 a.m., so each bidder fills the gap their own way.
The owner can’t picture it
Asked what they want from a system they haven’t lived with, a client has little to go on. Nothing is agreed that anyone can point to later.
It turns up late
The gaps show as variations during the build and as arguments at handover, after the walls are closed.
Start each room from a card, then change what your client wants changed.
An ORBS card says in plain words what a type of room does, what it needs, the starting numbers with their ranges, and how to test it. In Casient Brief a room starts with its card’s behaviours already in. You review the exceptions, not every line.
What the room does
Every behaviour starts in, from the card. Untick one the client doesn’t want.
What the room needs
- Presence
- Switched lighting
- Dimmable lighting
- Tunable white
Handover tests
- 01Someone arrives. Pass: lights on ahead of the person.
- 02Night mode, someone moves. Pass: path light at 10% warm, never full brightness.
- 03Empty for 3 minutes. Pass: lights turn off.
- 04Through the day. Pass: colour temperature follows the day: cooler and brighter at midday, warm and low after sunset.
Then each person signs their own part
For now, print the brief and sign it; signing in the tool is coming.
- OwnerApproves the changes from the cards.
- ArchitectConfirms the brief matches the design intent.
- ConsultantsReview their own trade’s list.
- IntegratorAccepts the tests into scope.
Behaviours that respond to life-safety systems can’t be unticked. The device list and the handover tests update as you go.
What you hand over, and to whom.
The integrator
The approved brief to price from, a device and interface schedule, and a proposed handover test for each behaviour. They accept the tests into scope, then price and design the job.
Electrical and services consultants
Device and interface lists by room and by trade, each line traced to a behaviour your client asked for. CSV for their own schedules.
Your client
The behaviours they approved, in plain words, with the reason for every change.
You
A record of design intent. If value engineering drops a behaviour, the change and the reason are on the record.
- What your sign-off covers
- Each person signs their own decisions. Yours confirms the brief matches the design intent. It says nothing about the safety, correctness or performance of the controls.
- What stays with the integrator
- Detailed design, installation, and proof by test that the agreed behaviours work.
Where it stands.
- Casient Brief
- Free to try in your browser. It starts from the cards for homes and early-learning centres; apartments, hotels and offices are early drafts and will change as their cards are reviewed.
- The cards
- The Open Room Behaviour Standard (ORBS) is a draft in closed review. Casient Pro started it, and it is not a Casient product. It works alongside VDI 3813 and EN ISO 52120-1. Read about ORBS.
- What the brief is
- What your client wants, on the record. Your integrator prices and designs the job.
Try it on your next project.
Add the rooms, take out what your client doesn’t want, and the device list and handover tests follow.