We can help you wherever you are in your low carbon journey, including:

  • Initial assessment and strategy development
  • Planning and modelling to develop programmes of interventions
  • Implementation of these programmes
  • On-going monitoring, management and learning

We recognize the challenges and to address these, we have brought together leading experts who have worked from national strategy (with BEIS) through practical implementation and ongoing assessment of efficacy.

Portfolio strategy development

Housing associations and local authorities face multiple dilemmas about how to retrofit their homes. Which homes to target, and what energy efficiency upgrades to carry out, are complex and technical questions, and choices determine both likely costs of retrofit work and the carbon and energy savings that can be achieved. They also affect critical concerns about fuel poverty and comfort. These decisions are made even more complicated by the current drive towards heat pumps and electric heating. Heat pumps are unfamiliar to tenants, who are often reluctant to move from boilers, which they understand and like. Electric heating was historically hard to control and expensive to run. Both of these factors make tenants (and portfolio managers) nervous. Working with Cambridge Architectural Research, we can help you to frame – and make – informed decisions about retrofitting, using state-of-the-art understanding of what works and what does not work in social housing.

Implementation planning and execution

Retrofit of properties requires that you adhere to the Government Trustmark standards. Adhering to these standards (including PAS2035) is paramount if your housing association or local authority is using government energy efficiency and decarbonisation grants to deliver retrofit measures.

Data Clan has partnered with leading provider Ambue to provide an innovative service to social housing providers and local authorities, taking advantage of a diverse range of combined experience and cutting-edge technology. The Ambue automated model quickly takes a property and its energy performance data from full measured survey to a digital twin and building information model. This enables the Retrofit Designer and Coordinator to create the Medium Term Improvement Plan to SAP C and the Whole House Plan to SAP A, with a unique design and pre-construction specification for each measure applied to each home and aligned with the strategy. The platform and process minimise the need for costly and time-consuming surveys and, when linked with detailed 3D LIDAR photogrammetry scans, bring a ‘point in time’ record of the property. This record is then available for asset management teams, professional advisors, main contractors and their qualified subcontractors to view without disrupting residents.

In parallel with the physical implementation, our behavioural change experts can work with your resident engagement and communications teams to create and deliver an impactful change programme. This will bring residents with you on the journey, and help to ensure that fears are overcome. Critically, it will also help residents make the most of the different usage patterns that often come with sustainable solutions.

Efficacy, evaluation, and continuous improvement

Whilst much is known about sustainable options, there is still much to learn. It is vital that any interventions are carefully assessed and lessons learned. These lessons will identify the difference between anticipated benefits and realizable benefits, and provide the feedback loop into your design standards.

We can help you put in place effective monitoring and management systems that blend real-time data collection (using the latest IoT technologies) with statistical modelling and forecasting. This allows for the learnings to be incorporated more quickly, and also provides valuable new information to planned maintenance teams and helps to turn reactive repairs into proactive repairs.

When you want to ask deeper questions of your data, we can also provide deeper analytical support to help you drive even more value.

Our sustainability team

  • Chris Lees – Chief Executive, Data & Workplace Expert (Data Clan)
  • Dr Rob Wray – Director, Research & Change Expert (Data Clan)
  • Dr Clare Murray – Director, Culture & Leadership Expert (Data Clan)
  • Dr Jason Palmer – Director (Cambridge Architectural Research)
  • Hamish McMichael – Co-founder, Chief Executive (Ambue)

For more information, please contact our Clan Quartermaster, Gemma Wardle: q@dataclan.expert.