ENERGY EFFICIENCY
High rise residents benefit from warmer homes
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Climate Energy’s Neil Beales discusses the challenges in making high-rise buildings more energy efficient. overcoming language barriers.
or many years, improving the energy efficiency of high-rise properties has been
difficult and complicated. Although many are suitable for cavity wall insulation, installing this can often prove to be a logistical nightmare and can also be expensive when taking into consideration the cost of scaffolding and contractors.
This was the dilemma facing Homes in Havering, the arms length management organisation for the London Borough of Havering, which wanted to improve the energy efficiency of two 12-storey high-rise residential buildings. In 2011 Climate Energy successfully bid on a contract to install cavity wall insulation in these residential blocks, building on the work it has done for Homes in Havering over the past 10 years, including the provision of draft proofing, heating, cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, external wall insulation and new glazing.
To get the very best out of this energy efficiency retrofit of the buildings, Homes in Havering wanted to undertake a number of other measures at the same time, making full use of the scaffolding and contractors while on site. As well as being chosen to install the cavity wall insulation, Homes in Havering employed Climate Energy to manage the entire energy efficiency retrofit of the two 12-storey buildings, including the management of other contractors to carry out improvements including glazing
and roofing and external decorations, as well as managing the scaffolding contractors.
As the principal contractor, Climate Energy was responsible for ensuring that the supply chain placed by the client communicated detailed programme expenditure, ensuring the successful delivery of the works and the clients’ lump sum costs were maintained. Working with the client as project manager, Climate Energy was able to provide its expertise in the delivery of large scale retrofit programmes.
It was Climate Energy’s responsibility to provide Homes in Havering with a full programme and timetable for the works across all measures and contractors and to keep residents updated with expected works dates for their individual properties.
In addition to the main contract being managed by Climate Energy, other refurbishment work was being carried out on the lifts to the two buildings. This required cooperation across the projects both at management and contractor level to ensure that disruption to the residents and contracts was kept to a minimum.
Throughout the project, Climate Energy worked with Homes in Havering’s own estates management team to ensure all resident concerns and queries were dealt with quickly and efficiently. Working closely with staff from Homes in Havering proved incredibly useful in
To ensure residents of the two 12-storey buildings and the surrounding areas were kept up to date with what was happening with their homes, Climate Energy held community engagement events throughout the project. Further to this, Climate Energy communicated personally with each resident identifying the installation dates four weeks in advance and then confirming the individual install dates one week in advance.
As a result of the project 863,726kg of lifetime CO2 emissions have been saved. That is enough CO2 to fill nearly 5,000 double-decker busses. This project was worth circa £700,000 to Climate Energy, with a total cost of circa £1.2m to Homes in Havering.
It was successfully completed in May 2012, with Homes in Havering expressing satisfaction in the management of the contract and inviting Climate Energy to manage additional high-rise energy improvement works.
Neil Beales
FOR MORE INFORMATION Neil Beales T: 01376 531 531 E:
info@climateenergy.org.uk
38 | public sector executive Sep/Oct 12
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