Portfolio Plus will build on Parity Projects' market-leading software, Portfolio, to produce retrofit roadmaps that incorporate a greater range of inputs, manages their interaction in programme planning, and delivers them in a format suited to the retrofit data supply chain requirements including financial services, procurement services and contractors. Through 17 years' experience of housing retrofit advice, Parity Projects has used data driven approaches to scale up advice provision from onsite homeowner advice to portfolios of up to 125,000 homes for landlords, and area-based analyses across 1 million+ homes for clients like London Councils, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Citizens Advice and the Climate Change Committee. The market is mature, to a certain extent, as there are a number of products and services available that map out what homes require to get to their decarbonisation targets. The gap in knowledge, at the portfolio scale, is how, when and where to do that work. This has resulted in Parity Projects, its clients and product users including Royal Borough of Greenwich and DG Cities undertaking analysis that could be automated to the benefit of landlords, local authorities and residents. We believe the answer is through a place-based approach, with a model that incorporates a time dimension that enables mapping and modelling to develop deliverable action plans. Working with current clients, including in-depth research of Greenwich's requirements and wider surveys of Parity's client base, this research will assess how the incorporation of data from across the market, in standardised and interoperable formats, can inform the development of roadmaps that are investor and procurement ready.

The Green Deal and other similar schemes need to work at a frantic pace in order to meet the targets set at 2020 and 2050 for the housing sector. Inefficient planning and logistics in the lead-in to work being carried out will slow that pace down considerably. We have faith in the industry to improve over time, but the pace of change required needs us to collectively hit the ground running when finance mechanism become available. All works, whether energy efficiency focussed or not, require a thorough survey at the start of the process. Construction projects are notorious for being over time and over budget and often that is due to the fact that jobs were not accurately planned or initial estimates were inaccurate. Parity Projects is seeking to develop a holistic process whereby as much key data is collected in one in-house session for all works that are likely to take place before the CO2 targets need to be met. Whilst there is an impetus on statutory surveys and energy efficiency works at this time, a holistic approach to integrate these with all other works has no market prerogative. We will consult closely with key stakeholders in the processes which enable retrofit but will firstly create a demonstration model such that our vision for the tool will be presented in our first meetings. Assessors/surveyors will see how their roles can be made more simple, with collected data stored for reuse in the future when the customer journey moves on. Clients such as homeowners, landlords and high street retailers will see the increased control over the procurement process. Once we have gathered thoughts and ideas we will seek to develop the tool into a more interactive example such that concept can be fully tested prior to more major investment taking place. Final thoughts will be collected from all stakeholders on the interactive version and a dissemination report and seminar will be arranged to demonstrate the capabilities and the case for wider implementation.

The public description for this project has been requested but has not yet been received.

The Square Mile Retrofit Project seeks to identify the best approach to deliver large-scale area based retrofit of Europe’s existing housing stock. This project explores this by taking three square mile areas to identify and test the various data collection approaches and analysis, resulting in case studies to demonstrate different retrofit strategy delivery models. Key project aims are to optimise planning for any retrofit roll-out e.g. the Green Deal, ECO, and fuel poverty reduction. As part of retrofit planning the project will identify the local skills base, training and the financial mechanism to deliver retrofit on a street by street level. The study will also have a focus on community level engagement to explore the square mile resident’s attitudes and opinions on their energy use behavior, motivations and barriers to taking up energy efficiency measures.