Speeding Up and Improving Retrofit Assessment – Futurebuild

Is your retrofit programme only as strong as its weakest assessment? Poor-quality data at the assessment stage is one of the biggest practical bottlenecks in UK retrofit right now – causing delays, rework and on-site surprises that a better process could have caught early.

This session, delivered by Jack Hannon, our Head of Operations and Retrofit, as part of a panel discussion with audience Q&A at the National Retrofit Conference at Futurebuild, covers the significance of PAS 2035, the challenges it addresses, and Building Energy Experts’ approach to retrofit assessment.

In this presentation, you’ll learn:

• Why the scale of the UK’s retrofit challenge is bigger than most people realise
• Building Energy Experts’ holistic approach to retrofit assessments, and where it’s heading next
• What’s changing in PAS 2035, RdSAP and MEES – and what got scrapped along the way
• What the audience asked, from private-market funding to AI in surveying

📺 Watch the presentation:

The Importance of PAS 2035

PAS 2035 is a standard for retrofit assessments, which are essential for ensuring that retrofit projects are carried out safely and effectively. It sets out clear guidelines for retrofit assessors, ensuring consistency and quality in the retrofit process. By following PAS 2035, landlords and portfolio managers can be confident that their retrofit project will be completed to a high standard, delivering the expected energy savings and improvements in comfort.

Why Retrofit Matters

The UK faces a significant challenge with regards to energy-inefficient homes.

• 80% of the UK homes occupied in 2050 are already built. These homes are often the oldest and leakiest in Europe, with some estimates suggesting they cool three times faster than those in Norway and Germany.
• Between 15 and 29 million homes in the UK are energy-inefficient, with an estimated 30% of the energy used to heat our homes lost through poor insulation and draughts. This translates to wasted energy and higher heating bills, pushing many into fuel poverty. The consequences extend beyond individual households, from higher NHS costs to children’s education suffering.
• Energy security. The war in Ukraine exposed our dependence on foreign energy and highlighted the need for greater energy security.
• National and global climate targets underscore the urgency of addressing our inefficient housing. Reaching net zero by 2050 requires significant improvements in energy efficiency, and retrofits play a crucial role in achieving this goal.

Challenges of Retrofit Assessments

There are a number of challenges associated with the retrofit assessment stage:

• Scale: Between 15 and 29 million UK homes need to be retrofitted to reach net zero by 2050 – roughly one to two homes every minute between now and then. Whatever the precise rate, it creates significant demand for qualified assessors, potentially leading to longer wait times and higher costs.
• Accuracy: Assessment information forms the bedrock of any retrofitting project. Inaccurate assessments can have costly consequences, including delays, rework, and additional on-site discoveries that weren’t identified initially.
• Funding: There are a number of funding schemes available for retrofit projects, but they can be complex and difficult to navigate.
  • Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (now the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund): Aims to upgrade social housing stock currently below EPC band C.
  • Energy Company Obligation (ECO4): Obligation of energy companies to deliver energy efficiency measures to help domestic premises reduce their energy bills and carbon emissions.
  • Great British Insulation Scheme: A recently-launched scheme, still finding its feet at the time of writing, for homeowners, landlords or tenants to improve energy efficiency in homes by providing free or heavily subsidised insulation measures.
• Access: Unlike new-builds, these homes are inhabited. The whole retrofitting process, from assessment to insulation, needs to work around the occupants and can be disruptive to their everyday life.

Our Approach to Retrofit Assessments

At Building Energy Experts we are passionate about driving sustainability in the construction industry, and retrofit assessments are a key area of our expertise. While we originally focused on sustainability consulting and testing services like air testing, Part F, thermography, and SAP assessments predominantly for new builds, the introduction of PAS 2035 presented an exciting opportunity to expand our services into the crucial realm of retrofit assessments. We believe in a holistic approach to retrofitting, recognising the value of comprehensive data collection to inform the most effective solutions.

This is why we go beyond the standard PAS 2035 assessment by offering a range of additional services during the same visit:

• Full Part F ventilation survey: This ensures proper ventilation strategies are incorporated into the retrofit plan.
• Air pressure testing (blower door or pulse): We determine the airtightness of the building envelope, a crucial factor in energy efficiency.
• Cavity wall inspections: We assess the condition of cavity walls to identify potential issues and inform insulation decisions.
• Thermography: We use thermal imaging to help identify areas of heat loss, allowing for targeted retrofit measures.

By combining these services, we can often gather all the additional information a client might need in a single, efficient appointment. This not only saves time and resources but also ensures a more comprehensive understanding of the property’s condition and retrofit needs. It also removes the need to rely on assumptions throughout the retrofit process.

Recognising the need for efficient data management, we developed a bespoke reporting system and later transformed it into a data collection app. This innovative app streamlines the assessment process, allowing our team to gather data quickly and accurately while ensuring no crucial information is missed. This commitment to innovation and efficiency is what led to Jack Hannon being awarded Retrofit Assessor of the Year 2023.

We are confident that our holistic approach, combined with innovative tools and expertise, positions us as a valuable partner in delivering high-quality, efficient, and safe retrofit projects.

Archetyping

To optimise costs, we conduct full-scope testing for archetype assessments. This involves:

• Gathering detailed data about a representative sample of dwellings within a specific group.
• Using this data to create a model applicable to other similar dwellings within the group.
• For Pathway B assessments, we adopt a scaled-back testing process to balance efficiency and accuracy.
• For clients seeking deeper analysis, we can input data into full SAP software to identify discrepancies internally and ensure the utmost confidence in our results.

Utilising archetyping allows the retrofit designer to develop cohesive design packages for each archetype, streamlining the process and improving efficiency. A Retrofit Assessment is still required for each dwelling to account for variations within the archetype group.

Grouping dwellings through archetyping allows for:

• More efficient and precise reports
• Time and cost savings for both on-site and office operations
• By minimising individual assessments, we minimise disruption to residents, crucial for project success

PAS 2038 Expertise

While our primary focus is on PAS 2035 domestic projects, we’ve also built genuine expertise in the commercial sector, having since carried out multiple PAS 2038 commercial retrofit assessments – including our work at St Saviours Hall.

Industry Trends

The retrofit industry is constantly evolving, and there are a number of key trends and considerations that are worth noting:

• PAS 2035 is being updated: The PAS 2035 update removes the old risk pathways (A, B and C), meaning the requirement for air tightness testing moves to the client’s discretion. It still emphasises the importance of having an air tightness strategy in place, and where a target is set within that strategy, testing is still required to demonstrate compliance
• A dedicated retrofit assessor standard is coming: Alongside the PAS 2035 update, BS 40104 – a standard specifically for retrofit assessment – is heading towards public consultation. The stated aim is a standardised, interoperable dataset for retrofit assessments, so data can move between assessors, coordinators and software without being re-keyed or lost at each handover – something the industry doesn’t really have today.
• RdSAP10 is being introduced: RdSAP10 is a new standard for Domestic Energy Assessments (DEAs). It includes a number of changes, such as the requirement to measure all windows, an existing requirement of Retrofit Assessments. It is also expected to enable the inclusion of an air tightness value.
• The EPC MEES regulations have been scrapped: Landlords were originally due to face fines of up to £30,000 for non-compliance if rental properties didn’t reach EPC band C or higher, on a phased timeline for existing versus new tenancies. These requirements have since been scrapped in favour of asking landlords to upgrade voluntarily, highlighting the need for alternative strategies to encourage property upgrades. August 2026 update: this reflects the position at the time of Jack’s talk in March 2024. MEES has since been reconfirmed and substantially expanded under the Warm Homes Plan – domestic landlords now face a confirmed EPC C target by 1 October 2030, with a raised cost cap and penalties of up to £30,000 per breach. See our full breakdown of the MEES 2030 rules for the current position.
• Concern regarding the Labour Party’s commitment to green spending: The party has u-turned on its previously announced £28 billion green spending plan, which – against a backdrop of the world passing 1.5°C of warming in the latter half of last year – has raised real concerns about political commitment to tackling climate change.

Future Outlook

The future of the retrofit industry is uncertain, but there are a number of things that need to be considered:

• Resident engagement: It is important to engage residents in the retrofit process from the beginning. This can be done by holding community meetings to educate residents on the purpose and benefits of the project, and appointing a dedicated Resident Liaison Officer to bridge the community and contractors – projects with both in place have seen meaningfully higher assessment uptake and project deliverability than those without.
• Resident education: Residents also need to be educated on the different retrofit technologies that are available, such as Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHRs), Decentralised Mechanical Extract Ventilation (DMEVs) and heat pumps. This will help them to make informed decisions about their homes and participate actively in the process.
• National campaigns: There is a need for national campaigns to raise public awareness about retrofits, to engage the broader public and encourage participation and support for these initiatives.
• Funding strategies: Funding strategies need to be rethought to take into account the scale, timeframes and deliverability of the retrofit challenge, to ensure sufficient resources for large-scale retrofit projects.

These measures combined seek to enhance resident engagement, education and the successful implementation of energy efficiency measures in retrofit projects going forward.

Q&A Highlights

• What are the challenges to getting more private (non-social-housing) homes retrofitted, and how do we solve them? Cost is the main barrier – many private homeowners lose interest once they find out what a thermographic survey, air tightness test, retrofit assessment and cavity wall inspection actually cost, on top of the retrofit itself. Existing schemes aimed at private owners via local authorities help at the margins, but consultants and contractors generally find it commercially difficult to work with individual private clients one at a time – there’s a real need to find ways of bringing private retrofit to scale, rather than treating each homeowner as a one-off.
• How well is the industry adopting digitisation and AI in retrofit surveying? Not well enough yet. Systems currently don’t talk to each other, so data still gets manually re-keyed between them, which is slow and prone to error – described on the panel as “stone age” for an industry only a few years into using PAS 2035 at all. There’s real potential for AI to help with the volume of assessment work ahead, but human judgement on site isn’t going anywhere – people are still needed for the parts of the process that involve dealing directly with residents.
• Is there a market for retrofit assessment among able-to-pay private homeowners, and should assessors be involved in post-retrofit evaluation too? On evaluation: yes, there’s a strong case for it, and assessors who’ve been involved with a property from the start – understanding its occupancy patterns and how the works were actually carried out – are well placed to help explain any performance gap later, though in practice it’s more likely to be a Retrofit Coordinator who’s stayed with the project throughout, rather than necessarily the original assessor. On the private market: there’s genuine appetite to see retrofit assessment recognised as a standalone, valuable product in its own right, but for most companies, serving individual private clients one by one is commercially difficult without some kind of aggregating scheme to work through. Monitoring and evaluation more broadly is still only happening in pockets rather than systematically, and improving that feedback loop is key to making retrofit models more accurate over time.

Reflecting on the Day

Jack shared his own reflections on the conference shortly afterwards:

Inspiring Day at Futurebuild 2024! I had an incredible time at The National Retrofit Conference, where I had the privilege of presenting and participating in a thought-provoking panel discussion. Sharing insights on not necessarily Speeding up, but Scaling up PAS 2035 Retrofit was truly fulfilling, and engaging with fellow industry experts during the panel discussion added valuable perspectives to the conversation. Grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the knowledge exchange at Futurebuild and connect with so many passionate professionals in the retrofit sector.

A big shout-out to The Retrofit Academy CIC and my fellow panellists for making it a memorable experience and congratulations to all the winners of this year’s awards! Looking forward to more opportunities for collaborative learning and growth in the future.

— Jack Hannon, Head of Operations & Retrofit

What’s Next?

The retrofit industry is rapidly evolving, and we consider ourselves to be at the forefront, offering a comprehensive and efficient approach to retrofit assessments.

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We carry out PAS 2035 retrofit assessments, testing, coordination and design for social housing, local authority and private retrofit programmes of any scale.