Briefing notes from BSRIA Sustainable Futures. Redefining Retrofit for Net Zero Living 2024

[edit] A brief introduction to the event and the organiser

This years Building Services Research and Information Association or BSRIA Briefing event was held at the Brewery in the heart of London, as it was last year. For those readers unfamiliar with BSRIA, as an organisation they are a registered test, instruments, research and consultancy organisation, providing specialist services in construction and building services. From the perspective of an layman they are technical organisation with an understanding of the practical issues facing the design and construction industry, the testing capabilities to evidence performance and a deep understanding of how technological advances are changing the face of the built environment and the markets in which they exist.

From looking at the built environment from outside, far outside from space, investigating the impacts of how new satellite derived data sets and technology are impacting the industry, to remaining inside, measuring localised air quality in the built environment, the BSRIA briefing continues to innovate. It has never ceased to take a topic, investigate it thoroughly from the many technical angles and present it in understandable ways that leaves the audience knowing and wanting more. This year was no exception, grappling with two themes that are high on the current agenda, net zero and retrofit, and how the industry has to pull together in a relatively short time span to develop a sustainable future.

[edit] Baroness Brown of Cambridge DBE FREng FRS - What Gov and industry should do

The Baroness started the keynote talk by reminding the audience of the emergency that is being faced, and what the future holds if emissions continue and temperature rises at its current trajectory. The number of natural loss events, not only the increasingly clear environmental impacts but showing more clearly as impacts on related economic losses. The world is already changing already, rapidly and as such so are markets, for example impact estimates of damage levels from within the insurance industry see up to 4 or more times the damage losses compared to the 1980's.

The regular publication of UK carbon budgets, the climate change act, legislative changes and shifts in industry are helping significant progress be made. However to keep this up, for emission reduction to stay in line with budgets and match the graphics, the rate of decarbonisation will need to significantly ramp down, indeed triple over the next three years. Further more, whilst a useful measuring stick, these budgets are not ultimate truths, they measure only what the UK produces, as they are based on the Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs, they do not measure what is produced elsewhere and consumed in the UK. These off site emissions are outside of these mechanisms, but they are real and significant, the UK is current a consumption economy.

Baroness Brown passed on the strong message that considering all of the above we must not forget adaptation, the risks associated with overheating, flooding, etc… will continue but there are opportunities represented by focussing on mitigation with adaptation being considered as part of this, such as green cities. She summed up her talk with two slides, one for the built environment sector and one for the government on what is required:

[edit] Prof. Richard Fitton, University of Salford - The importance of retrofit assessments

The Professor started his with a warning that his talk would not run through many examples of retrofit failures, although there are many, it was a time to focus on successes, solutions and steps forward. Though as an example he did show just one image of how localised failure occurs to display how the interaction of technology and people can sometimes go wrong, with an image of a bed, air conditioning unit one side, fridge on the other and a fan at the end of the bed.

He discussed the importance of studying a problem first and acting on that study, in the case of retrofits in the UK the need for the standardisation of retrofit assessments. The term retrofit assessment is used in PAS 2035:2023 Retrofitting dwellings for improved energy efficiency – Specification and guidance, described as 'the process of surveying, inspecting, assessing and recording the relevant characteristics of an existing dwelling ...in order to provide sufficient information for the preparation of a retrofit.' The standard was first published in 2019 and the latest revision for 2023 will be superseded in March 2025, it outlines how retrofit projects should be managed and delivered.

Figures by Trustmark from November 2024, indicate that some 225k retrofit assessments have already been carried out in the UK. The data collected through these retrofit assessments already form a vital data set at national level and through standardisation and further roll will be able to form the best overall assessment of UK housing stock, essentially ever gathered. Whilst PAS 2035 is a fantastic document in order for greater comparability and better data collection, a more refined standardisation of a retrofit assessment is needed, hence the work which is being done on developing the BS 40104 Assessment of dwellings for retrofit.

This work was first started by RICS in their document 'Residential retrofit standard: RICS Professional Standard UK, published as a 1st edition in March 2024, effective from 31 October 2024. The BS 40104 Assessment of dwellings for retrofit, will effectively formalise and expand on this work, the new British Standard with effectively replace clauses 8.2-8.6 of the PAS 2035 document and will add clarity and context to other sections if so required. Professor Fitton then ran through the approach that was being taken to the standard, section by section with illustrative slides and images.

The Professor concluded with a statement of the risks associated with not properly assessing for retrofit and of not retrofitting enough properties. People continue to remain in Fuel Poverty: In October 2021, 4.5 million UK households were in fuel poverty. As of 1 October 2024, there are 6 million (NEA 2024). People continue to die in from cold conditions in poor quality homes. 8,500 people died in England and Wales in winter due to cold homes in 2020 (ONS 2020).

[edit] Sanchayan Banerjee - Personalising solutions for retrofits

Sanchayan shared their research findings on tailored approaches for homeowners, ALIGN4energy. How can citizens be activated to invest in greening their homes? What is the role of data and for behavioural science ? What is the role here of behaviour change and of tailoring retrofit options to suit personas?

Two years ago the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the importance of behaviour change, in Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. He described issues of how to account for myriad preferences of customers when it comes to retrofits, the need to analyse homeowner attitudes towards green retrofits, to evaluate the efficacy of personalisation techniques when compared to traditional methods, to identify key factors that influence consumer decisions in sustainable home improvements.

The ALIGN4energy research advocated for personalised strategies to optimise the chosen retrofit outcomes, describing three steps to achieving this:

The results lead to behavioural phenotyping of personas into 5 classes, or 5 clusters of consumers:

Do these personas also describe different demographics, for example at the two extremes: The cost conscious pragmatists include people with better comprehension, more experience, higher aged, female, urban and higher income earners, whilst the contrarians mostly include people with less comprehension, higher present-biased, less energy and financial literacy, low renovation experience, higher aged, females. Other examples in more simple terms might be that some people are more driven by gains than by Some people driven more by gains than by losses, whilst others potential risks or losses are the main drivers.

Understanding these persona different help to better tailor the way consumers are approached and in turn the retrofit approaches that might be suggested and adopted. The project employed ideas around discrete choice research, or choice cards that represented different retrofit types, solutions etc to help customers select the best fit for their circumstances and their persona, leading to more effective actual retrofit options, taking the consumer along with the project, rather than imposing it upon them. The one size fits all approach simply doesn’t work in most cases when looking at greening retrofits.

In summing up Sanchayan briefly talked about next steps, using the results in the guiding and running the next experiments, collection of data from these studies. Employment of machine learning, using the results to train models in helping in formulating the offer to customers and consumers, to some extend automating the approach for better outcomes once projects are complete.

[edit] Joe Benson - construction investment socio-economic due diligence

Joe, introduced his talk saying he would run through a variety of projects at a variety of scales looking at them through the lens of social impact, perspective on their success or failure:

• Positive and negative social impacts
• Measuring the social "success"
• Different perspectives - same retrofit
• Meaningful consultation

He ran through a wide range of projects, highlighting how the projects had impacted the areas in different ways from a social and socio-economic perspective.

Points to watch:

In summary keeping a eye on social levels of procurement and the wider picture of social imapcts, possitive and negative. Measuring success through company goals kpis etc... Project impacts on household economics.. savings etc. Procurement legislation, due dilligence and social value. Creating meaningful dialogue within the project and persons involved the social capital that cxan be create by the relationships between people.

[edit] Justin Kirby - Exec Direct Digital Buildings Council

Kevin Brownell, Steering Committee Member and Secretary of the Digital Buildings Council, SMaRT technology specialist and accredited SmartScore professional and Certified Protection Professional (CPP®) was unable to speak. So Justin Kirby, Exec Director of the Digital Buildings Council stepped in at short notice to present.

He openly expressed his position coming from the digital sphere that developers, owners and operators are no longer considering digitisation from the view point of the why they need to be digitising but how best to do it.

'Smart is becoming BAU, so not about the Why now but the How! - the tech stack focus is to analyse data, optimise and automate performance and to provide better experiences. To highlight this he named over 30 projects in central london alone that the Digital Buildings Council is currently involved in with its partners. Working with independent data layers that hvac, fire, access, heating, helping to get the data, analyse that data and optimise performance and reduce emissions.

Justin talked about examples from Australia, where NABERS is reuired and performance data is part of the assessment, which is what needs to happen to plug the gap between predicted data and real, actual performance data, digitisation can help that. Other examples mentioned included the International well being institute, the links between refurbishment and health and well being.

Justin shared some slides from Dr Matthew Marson (see his previous slide presentation here Net Zero Carbon). A reminder that currently 40% of Global CO2 emissions come from Buildings and in order to achieve the levels of buildings stock required in the EU by 2050, 25% more is yet to be built. Where the average today energy consumption today is around 160 kWh/m2 year, the target needs to be at around 55 kWh/m2 year, to achieve the levels of reduction needed but today even the best in class comes out at about 110 kWh/m2 year. There is still some way to go.

Relating back to the RIBA plan of work and in particlar the example of the RIBA Smart Buildings overlay, Performance-based metrics (like NABERS) can help drive meaningful improvements in building performance and potentially help plug the project to operations gap. (or RIBA stages 6 handover to 7 use). Is there room for another RIBA overlay that looks more specifically at this transition perhaps Digital Smart Soft Landings Performance in use.

The link to BIM is an important one, taking modelling through to that next level from design model into an operations model where the BIM becomes the BMS, the model in the same and transferrable it is a true digital twin.

In summary Justin talked about the difference between efficient buildings and effective buildings, using energy where it is needed for the right outcomes, ie positively impacting health and well being and findiing that right balance. He also discussed the need for greater clarification in terms of definitions and standardisation, what do we mean by retrofit, refurbishment, renovation, CAT A, CAT B and so on.

[edit] Hamish Taylor

The closing keynote was in many ways a step away from the retrofit theme, or at least looking at the issues from a different perspective in the active and engaging style of Hamish Taylor. In what was a whirlwind tour of branding, from the man who brought fully flat beds to first-class flights from Procter & Gamble to PwC, and BA to Eurostar, Eurodisney, and onto Sainsbury's, he gave a rare insight into the logics, logistics, and customer-led ideas around transforming businesses. He brought his wealth of experience and nuggets of learning to listen to the customer back to the challenges, importance, and opportunities around retrofit, which is perhaps a perspective that is sometimes forgotten in the rush to meet targets and get projects moving.

In his first "shared" learning, he talked about customer-led transformation and the role of value propositions. That 'it's NOT about you!!' How we (as an industry) are all enablers for someone else's success. The importance of putting the customer at the centre of everything is to gain insights into those customers to help make attractive offerings and not forget the idea of that customer promise, be that lower bills, lower carbon, warmer homes, healthier living, etc.

In his first 2nd "shared" learning, Hamish continued with the theme of customer-led transformation. That is it also 'NOT about the product!!' On a graph of innovation and competitive advantage against customer centricity, the product is the first and lowest point of growth, then comes the experience, and then for success come the feelings that are engaged.

In his 3rd "shared" learning again with Customer-Led Transformation, he summed up that 'It IS about Everyone!' both internally and externally. Internally, that is to say the boss, the team, the departments, those who work on the front line of customer-facing, perhaps the contractors, or the door-to-door canvassers. It is the partners/colleagues/supply chain/competitors; they are all part of providing the same "end consumer" goal. Externally, it's everyone else: the consumers, businesses, regulators, the government, the environment, etc. The lesson is the importance of "taking others with you." Summing up, there are two challenges: the "Value Proposition" challenge and the Leadershipand Collaboration Challenge.

Bringing these learnings together, Hamish described customer-led transformation as a funnel, on one side learning the customer and immersing yourself in their world, creating a platform to feed into the triangle of the customer-led promise. The next stage is making it happen, bringing fresh thinking with an open mind, and winning the engagement battle! He gave numerous examples of companies that have tried, tested, and adopted this approach, developing key accounts, customer services, and personal development to achieve new products, new collaborations, and, importantly, innovation. Quoting the earlier speaker, he agreed, 'Get the building well understood BEFORE we do the retrofit" (Richard Fritton).

Hamish continued with many other nuggets of wisdom and experience regarding the customer experience, for example, that 'Data is NOT insight,' that there is the customer's head that data tries to understand, but there are also the customer's shoes, understanding their journey. Data can sometimes not pick up on the customer's mental journey. What are the soft insights—the feelings, the stories, the language, etc.? These he described as the customer gap and reiterated the importance of getting people outside to experience the experience for real and the importance of collaboration.

Hamish helped bring back the challenges of retrofit to the people that the retrofit might be happening to, the importance of their role and perspective in the successes and failures, along with the buildings, products, and practitioners, something that is perhaps left behind or not discussed enough when talking about retrofit for the future.

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