Our retrofit assessment team has completed thousands of domestic assessments, and the same five habits show up in every one that goes well. Here’s our best practice blueprint, in the hope it helps the wider sector improve.
In this blog, you’ll learn:
- Key data points for a thorough retrofit assessment
- The benefit of a cross-trained, collaborative team
- Why accurate floor plans matter more than they seem to
- Tips for effective communication with stakeholders
If you’re new to retrofit assessments, our full breakdown of the role is in Retrofit Assessors: What Do They Do? — this post picks up from there, covering how to do one well rather than what one is.
What Does a Best Practice Retrofit Assessment Look Like?
A good retrofit assessment provides sufficient information to help the wider project team understand what needs to be done.
Great retrofit assessments go beyond these minimum requirements, supplying comprehensive measurements, accurately scaled floor plans, photos, commentary, and insight into any problem areas encountered during the assessment.
A retrofit project benefitting from this level of detail has a much higher chance of success at the design and implementation stages, because the coordinator has been given everything they need to make the right decisions.
5 Steps to Approach a Best Practice Retrofit Assessment
Our team has developed a tried and tested five-step approach they use on every site visit, ensuring the highest standard of retrofit assessment.
Step 1: Follow a set process
Every house is different and every resident has their own particular set of needs. This means that each visit can feel overwhelming at first. Following the same process every time makes the assessment smoother and more efficient, with much of the work seeming almost automatic.
After greeting the resident, we start off by drawing a basic floor plan by hand, noting all vents, lights, doors, windows, and heating systems. We then take a logical path through the property, moving methodically from room to room taking measurements and photos, observing issues, and making notes.
Key Takeaway: Following a consistent process during each site visit ensures thorough and efficient data collection for every assessment.
Step 2: Collect more data than the minimum requirement
While the industry standard submission tools only ask for limited information, our team collects far more than the minimal data. We’ve developed an extensive checklist of mandatory data points over time – in consultation with experienced Retrofit Coordinators.
There are lots of specific things to cover in a best practice assessment, from inspecting loft hatches to photographing corroded window sills. You need to tick each point in the checklist, in order, before you complete each inspection. The final retrofit assessment report should contain extensive photos, comments on issues encountered, and a professional floor plan drawn to scale. More data means better insights and a higher chance of project success.
Key Takeaway: Going beyond the minimum data requirements provides a comprehensive view of the property, ensuring higher-quality assessments.
Step 3: Work closely with the wider team
For large properties and Risk Pathway C projects that require an air test, our lead assessor will often work with another member of the team. This means there are two people double-checking the data and an additional point of view to contextualise any observations. This team-based approach ensures higher accuracy and quality control.
This is a step that is pretty unique to our cross-trained team of retrofit assessors: many are also qualified air tightness testing engineers, Part F ventilation testing engineers, and thermographers.
While most Pathway C retrofit projects require an external testing engineer to be drafted in, we keep the project in-house, reducing costs, improving quality, and increasing turnaround times.
Key Takeaway: Collaborating with a cross-trained team ensures double-checking of data and helps maintain high standards of accuracy and efficiency.
Step 4: Convert floorplans from freehand to SketchUp
An accurate floorplan is essential for any retrofit project. The most effective way to produce this is to convert the freehand drawings made on-site to professional standard SketchUp files.
We work as one big team on large projects with tight turnaround times. Onsite assessors will check data and draw floor plans freehand. Desk-based staff then convert these floor plans and QA all reports before they are submitted. Staff back at the office will support on-site assessors with the desk-based work mentioned above.
This ensures the most precise and scalable visualisation of the property, helping both the project designer and coordinator better understand the space and plan retrofitting solutions.
Key Takeaway: Converting freehand floorplans to professional SketchUp files ensures precise, scalable representations of each property.
Step 5: Work closely with your key stakeholders
Good communication is key. Conversations with people on-site can provide vital qualitative information to inform the project report, while energy efficiency information can be shared with residents if they want to make their own behaviour changes.
Developing a good relationship with the coordinator in charge of each project and discussing any issues or concerns as soon as they arise is critically important. Feedback from them can help us improve our reports and data collection, while our observations play an important role in guiding the subsequent project phases.
We iterate our approach each time we receive feedback and are continually improving our reports and processes.
Key Takeaway: Maintaining open communication with project stakeholders ensures any concerns are addressed early and contributes to improved report quality and project success.
Why Retrofit Assessments are Crucial
A well-executed retrofit assessment is the foundation of a successful retrofit project — the data it produces shapes every energy-efficiency decision that follows, and how confidently a coordinator or designer can make it.
What’s Next?
These five steps are what separate a genuinely useful assessment from one that just meets the minimum requirement — and they’re the same five steps our team runs on every site visit, whatever the project’s scale. For the wider standard all of this sits within, see our companion piece, PAS 2035: What is it, and Why Does it Matter?
We carry out PAS 2035 retrofit assessments to this standard on every project, for portfolios and programmes nationwide.
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