Public Funding for Rapiere Software Limited

Rapiere Software Limited **(RSL)**, through its cloud-based product **ECCOlab** offers the key instrument to all building professionals (architects, engineers, investors, building operators) and users alike to navigate challenges of satisfying the UK/EU 'Near Zero Energy Buildings' (NZEB) and similar regulations in other parts of the world, that usually require minimising buildings' carbon/energy footprint at a feasible cost. All of that is delivered in an audited way, using mathematics, physics and economics; this makes ECCOlab, with some localisation, deployable anywhere in the world. By using knowledge-based approach through expert systems and Artificial Intelligence (AI) optimisation, the entire platform is delivered through a collaborative effort of the industry-leading experts in the respective fields of Energy, Carbon and Cost, as well as Information Technology (IT). Our objective is to build on Building Information Modelling (BIM), but change focus from performing sub-optimum simulations and evaluations to the **_optimised building solutions,_** offering a genuine new quality which would not have been explored before due to time and cost pressures on the design process. Putting it simply, while you might spend a few months exploring and refining 3-5 building options for a given site context, all of them probably sub-optimum -- now you can have an **_actual energy-cost-carbon optimum in one-tenth of the time or less_**, with another 10 options closely ranked by the user-defined criteria. This is, by many users' accounts, a very compelling argument. We also wish to make **life-cycle carbon** _the_ method of assessing carbon impacts instead of the commonly-used, flawed operational carbon indicator; the optimum solutions reached through life-cycle carbon assessments are frequently very different from the ones focussing on operational characteristics only. How to deliver a cost-optimum, sustainable-as-can-be solution, satisfying the new (inter)national regulations which are on the way, bearing in mind these, frequently conflicting requirements? **Answer: ECCOlab!** **ECCOlab** will research, develop and implement 3 items based on the existing software platform: 1\. **Building Solution Optimiser** -- based on an Expertise-managed chosen multi-parameter space, Optimiser manages scenarios, monitors results and **automatically delivers optimised** building **solutions**, ranked according to the user-defined criteria; utilises AI and ranges to prevent unrealistic outcomes. 2\. **A set of 3** **fully attributed Templates** of medium sized buildings of 3 different types: a multi-apartment block, an office block and a school. 3\. **A new cost model**, with an appropriate resolution for the above items, with **external feed** of construction cost information, adjustable to various world locales and time-sensitive.