Public Funding for Orbit Group Limited

This feasibility study project aims to establish the basis for a new construction industry sector in mass- customised, off-site manufactured domestic refurbishment. This will require innovation in business models; supply chain relationships and interoperability; the treatment of risk, performance assurance and warranties in contractual relationships; financing and investment; post refurbishment maintenance arrangements and in the technical approaches adopted from capturing the pre-refurbishment property data to physical upgrade, testing and verification and building operation. The project will thus set out a coherent set of industry and market interventions to deliver physical, organisational, contractual, performance guaranteed and warranted framework that will drive the development and mass uptake of affordable deep refurbishment packages for the existing housing stock. If successful the partners will exploit the findings through progressing to physical piloting of the approach in social housing stock and through dissemination across a wide customer and supplier base.

This project will establish a consortium to innovatively address heating control management in the domestic sector. MyCloudConrol is a robust, self-learning cloud based heating control platform that will monitor the micro and macro environment of homes by using sensor systems and a novel algorithm. The scheme will enable an improvement in heating efficiency and manage annual budgeting to meet the householder’s need without compromising their thermal comfort. As additional features, MCC will offer non-intrusive monitoring of the vulnerable based on system engagement, and track boiler CO emissions to predict servicing needs. Presently, no such integrated technology exists. A TSB SMART “Proof of Market” study highlighted the need for the device by the end users and domestic boiler suppliers. The experienced management and advisory team together with the main collaborating partner, the National Energy Foundation and The Orbit Group will develop a "Beta" prototype, a self-learning algorithm, de-risk the business and deliver the Project objectives within the £329,180 budget in 15 months.