Public Funding for Ambue Ltd

"Transform-ER" (Transform. Engage. Retrofit) brings together an experienced and diverse consortium to tackle multiple barriers to retrofitting homes. The vast majority of the UK's existing housing stock will still be present by 2050 and therefore must comply with Net Zero 2050 legislative objectives. The current retrofit market in the UK has insufficient depth of capacity and breadth of capability to satisfy the need of retrofitting over 1 million homes per year, to achieve this. Hence a transformational approach is required, which will leverage the best aggregated learning from multiple, key stakeholder representatives (the consortia), a plethora of prior projects, and an enhanced level of coordination and structure. In tandem, Transform-ER will embrace the migration towards offsite construction, the adoption of Modern Methods and take the best learning from other manufacturing-led sectors to apply to the retrofit market. The project will realise systemic change to enable rapid deployment of high quality retrofit solutions, targeting delivery of 1m homes per year by 2030\. Transform-ER adopts the Product Platform Rulebook's 'Demand, Develop, Deploy' structure to envisage our future retrofit system. Efforts across each of these work packages will come together, creating the following benefits: * Better data on portfolios and projects, reducing risk and enabling visibility of pipelines * Clear interoperability rules for new products, enabling kits of parts to be brought together * Routes to market for existing and new verified solutions, with a streamlined and simplified accreditation route * A product database and procurement platform, which uses data to create a competitive market place for offsite products alongside traditional * A new approach to contracting for delivery, based on the Heathrow Terminal 5 model, which incentivises collaboration to achieve completion on time and to budget, through innovative profit structure. * A culture change programme which enables organisations to adopt a more collaborative approach. * A finance and insurance supported vehicle for delivery of retrofit. All of the new approaches will be underpinned by an end-to-end data platform, enabled by a set of guidelines to enhance the structure, control and consistency of retrofit delivery, in association with a fair and equitable market vehicle - a Community Interest Company. A Retrofit Rulebook will be developed which will write up the activities in the project as case studies, and set out clear guidance for other industry actors, and those wishing to join the retrofit revolution.

**Improving property portfolio sustainability analysis with graph machine learning** There are a number of key hurdles in upgrading the United Kingdom's property stock, and then delivering sustainable retrofit at pace and scale. One is the securing of an accurate picture of its existing state so as to make timely, cost-effective and targeted retrofits to each property. Another is accessing private finance to execute these projects once they have been identified. Registered Providers ("RP's") have become dependent on unreliable, gamed and increasingly-inaccessible data to make these investment decisions, whilst blanket on-site surveys are time-consuming and disruptive. Often, this data is used to produce deterministic energy assessments via methods such as SAP, which have known limitations in terms of real-world performance gaps, and through which the quality of initial data and associated uncertainty is not materially quantified. Building retrofit strategies on the back of such stock assessment propagates unquantified project risk due to the quality of feedstock data, and increases the likelihood that desktop assessed projects will need to be significantly reworked upon reaching detailed design and procurement. This risk can be mitigated through careful archetyping of the project stock and confirmatory surveys, but this is resource intensive, expensive and can slow down project delivery. The project is to model in enhanced detail, a sub-set of a client's property portfolio, including developing a customised retrofit pattern book, with enhanced property measurements and surveys to significantly improve the accuracy of the baseline and forecast data for these properties. We will then use Graph Algorithms (machine learning) to extrapolate the findings to apply the improved analysis and forecasts, to the whole portfolio. This will enable greater confidence in the data and analysis, to in turn have better confidence in the forecasts and retrofit improvements and outcomes.

It is widely accepted that to meet UK's Net Zero targets by 2050, we need to significantly reduce carbon emissions. 40% of CO2 emissions are from buildings, with 20% from residential property. The De-carbonisation of existing residential property will also help "build back better" and greener, from the COVID-19 pandemic. The government is launching a £2bn "Green Homes Grant" in September 2020 to stimulate this economic recovery. The challenge is how to deliver the volume of retrofit projects, efficiently and effectively? * Every property and household is unique, demanding bespoke solutions and a holistic "whole house plan" * Implementing the design and delivery of home retrofits, is costly and slow, * With too much technical information, it's hard for consumers to obtain clear, simple advice * Too few design and management professionals, make it slow and expensive. Existing solutions, to provide consumer data are: * Mandatory household EPC's (Energy Performance Certificates) giving unclear advice and un-validated costs. * Professional consultants and software are too expensive and technical for domestic consumers Previous initiatives didn't generate expected retrofit demand and outcomes, partly because the data were confusing and initial work was expensive, constraining initial decision making on investment strategies. Our Innovation: A Data driven solution, using new technology to create an innovative property service and business model. * Use new technology, to streamline the process and reduce costs, to make data collection and analysis more accessible. * Reduce the time and cost of surveys, by guiding the consumer to collect the data themselves, (with remote professional assistance by video). * Novel Business model, using immersive technology to help consumers understand, visualise and plan their own "whole house retrofit plans". * Creating a consumer oriented software (SAAS) platform, using gamification techniques, to help homeowners make informed decisions. Purpose of this project is to develop and test a new software platform for consumers. This builds on work already begun, transforming data collection and delivering a remote design service. The project automates this, creating a new business model, with a Software as a Service (SAAS) cloud based delivery platform. Pilot studies will assess customer engagement, demonstrating an increase in consumers undertaking sustainable retrofit projects.